P E R S P E C T I V E : M e d i a C i r c u s
The Times Firing on All Cylinders
BY ED SIKOV
The New York Times was on
quite a roll last weekend.
One after another, Times
columnists went ballistic,
but eloquently so, on the subject of our
president, Donald Rump, who has recently
done a brilliant job of exposing
himself — yet again — as a charlatan.
My Saturday morning began with
“The Crisis of the Republican Party,”
signed collectively by “The Editorial
Board”: “Compromise by compromise,
Donald Trump has hammered
away at what Republicans once saw
as foundational virtues: decency,
honesty, responsibility. He has asked
them to substitute loyalty to him for
their patriotism itself.” And this: “Mr.
Trump still feel so well-protected his
party that he has just named his own
golf resort for the next Group of Seven
Summit in 2020, a brazen act of selfdealing.”
Rump later decided, after
bipartisan condemnation, to scrap
this lamebrained — not to mention
illegal — plan.
It only gets better. Here’s Roger Cohen:
“Europeans shrug when they
don’t laugh. The consensus used is
the United States has lost it. There’s
nobody home. A child-president in the
Oval Offi ce writes a letter to the Turkish
leader who appropriately throws
it in the garbage. That’s where we are
this week. Next week is anybody’s
guess. Trump and uncertainty are
synonymous. A rough compass indicates
presidential derangement
is pointing north.” And my favorite:
“Still, Trump’s abandonment of the
Kurdish forces that died by the thousands
fi ghting the Raqqa ISIS caliphate
in Northern Syria ranks high for
sheer perfi dy.... Even the plankton
! known as the Republican Party
were so appalled that some lawmakers
developed suffi cient backbone to
protest.” Perfi dy is such a fi ne word.
According to the dictionary, it means
treachery, duplicity, deceit, disloyalty,
infi delity, faithlessness, betrayal,
treason, double-dealing, dishonesty,
and untrustworthiness. They ought
to add a picture of Rump as an illustration.
Meanwhile, Bret Stephens compared
the acting chief of staff, Mick
Mulvaney, to the bumbling Inspector
Clouseau of “Pink Panther” fame, describing
his infamous news conference
as “hallucinatory.”
Nicholas Kristof wrote that “Trump
doubled down by saying that the
Kurds “were no angels” and compared
the fi ghting in Syria that he unleashed
— with hundreds dead and 300,000
displaced — to a couple of kids fi ghting
in a vacant lot. Trump’s own former
special envoy, Brett McGurk,
responded on Twitter:‘This is an obscene
and ignorant statement.’”
Out gay columnist Frank Bruni
called the Rump administration a
“jaw-dropping, brain-exploding phantasmagoria.”
Nice one Frank!
But my favorite of all was reporter
Peter Baker on Rump’s 1001st day
as president: “It was a day when he
boasted of saving ‘millions of lives’
temporarily stopping a Middle East
War that he effectively allowed to start
in the fi rst place, then compared the
combatants to children who had to
be allowed to slug each other out to
get it out of their system. It was a day
when he announced without any evident
embarrassment that offi cials of
the federal government that answers
to him had scoured the country for
a site for next year’s Group of Seven
Summit meeting and determined
that the perfect location, the very best
site in the whole United States, just
happened to be a property he owns
in Florida. It was a day when he sent
out his top aide, and advisor who has
served as acting White House chief
of staff for nearly 10 months without
ever being granted the respect of
earning the title outright, to try and
quell the whole impeachment furor,
only to have him essentially admit
the quid pro quo the president had so
adamantly denied.”
I like the rhythmic repetition and
the building sense of absurdity mixing
with an aura of childlike wonder
at the whole spectacle. I even like the
accompanying photograph showing
scores of grinning human cows, aka
Rump supporters at a rally in Dallas.
“‘Big Mouth’ is the Queer Childhood
I Wish I Had” is the arresting
title of an op-ed piece by Charles
Dunst, also in The Times last weekend.
Fans of the dirty animated Netflix
series (hairy, disembodied penises
appear frequently) are already familiar
with the show’s main characters,
Matthew, a fl amboyant and obviously
gay teenager, chief among them. Matthew
is out to everyone at school, a
state of mind and being completely
alien to me. I could no more imagine
being out in high school than I could
imagine walking on the moon. I take
that back. I can easily imagine walking
on the moon, having watched the
moon landing on television in July
1969.
It was the summer between eighth
and ninth grade. I had already
reached puberty, the central subject
of “Big Mouth.” I’d jerked off to fruition
for the fi rst time the previous summer
during the Republican National Convention.
I know this because I turned
on the rabbit-eared TV in my room to
cover the telltale noises I imagined
myself making. Thus I came for the
fi rst time as Richard Nixon was being
nominated for the presidency.
But I digress. “In Season Three,
which premiered this month,” Dunst
writes, “Matthew (voiced by Andrew
Rannells) even pursues his fi rst
same-sex romantic relationship, with
Aiden (Zachary Quinto), who is the
same age. Matthew frets about Aiden
with Maury the Hormone Monster
— a character who embodies each
child’s confused pubescent impulses
— but the pair eventually become,
well, a pair. Their relationship is quite
sweet: Awkward courtship takes
place over FaceTime; the two kiss
for the fi rst time after Matthew coyly
yet confi dently slides his hand into
Aiden’s while an unimportant movie
playing on a nearby laptop fades into
the background.”
According to Dunst, this is not just
wish-fulfi llment; more and more kids
are coming out much earlier than I
did. As he explains, “I’m a gay man
in my early 20s, so Matthew’s story
line caught my attention, namely because
his experience differs so substantially
from my own lived analog.
My queer friends and I all came out in
our late teens or as adults and openly
pursued our fi rst same-sex relationships
only in adulthood. This, queer
people will tell you, is fairly standard.
For LGBTQ adults, Matthew’s subplot
offers a glimpse into the childhood
we didn’t have. But for those queers
who will follow us, Matthew evinces
hope.”
That such hope is played out on the
fi lthiest show on TV only adds to the
fun.
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