Please demonstrate for the jury that you understand the common meanings of the words “strawman” and “analogy”.
His analogy is flawed because it’s based on the assumption that Trump’s mannerism is a mockery of the same physical disability of the reporter, if the disability would had been, for example, epilepsy then it may be somewhere in the vicinity of a valid analogy. I think that mannerism is a way of portraying the person being mocked as being confused and incoherent.
The straw man is that he changed the argument from being about people using “you are a retard” as an answer to disagreement to simply insulting a mentally challenged person on sight.
But do you think there’s a good possibility that DT took note of the reporter’s disability, and then proceeded to mock his disability?
I’m having more of a postmodern meltdown.
At a guess, he was British, a bit self-deprecating, and wryly humorous. It probably went right over Trump’s head.
Wrong. His mannerism is an offensive mockery of an enfeebled person, period. It’s childish and pretty disgusting no matter who he is targeting with it. When his gestures are directed at someone with a disability, it is literally the definition of attacking that person’s disability. When it is targeted at someone without a disability, Trump is conveying that the target actually does have a disability. It’s just that simple.
Just because Trump mocks more than one person as being enfeebled, both physically and mentally, by adopting a cartoonish voice and waving his arms around, doesn’t make it non-offensive.
Trump is insulting someone every time he makes those gestures. Calling someone a retard is always an offensive insult. You’re not making a lick of sense.
No, I don’t think there’s a good possibility of that, I think the balance of probability is that he used the same gesturing he had used before to mock someone for saying something he considered stupid; specially in view that if you want to mock someone for having a stiff, crooked arm you wouldn’t choose to portray that condition by jerking the whole body and arms around, it would be something like mocking the condition of a paraplegic person on a wheelchair by hopping around on one as an amputee.
It is very easy to seek offense by assigning the worst possible motivation behind anyone’s words or actions, example coming up…
Ravenman is mocking my use of the English language because English is not my first language, I find his beheaviour to be racist.*
This is a very easy and inane game to play.
*No I don’t, because I’m not an idiot that likes to jump to self-serving conclusions in lieu of actually understanding things.
Then you have no business discussing politics on this board.
Or in this country.
Reviewing the thread, I felt OP’s concern and the dots he attempted to connect were so irrelevant and so stupid that I was confused. And other right-wingers joined in, bad-mouthing Ms. Streep from every direction. (Some of the stupidest right-wingers even go for the complete non sequitur, calling her acting over-rated. )
What’s all this about? Then I saw this:
Aha! The closest I come to right-wing social media is a cousin or two on Facebook, but they’re rational enough that they’d be called “centrist” or even “left-of-center” in post-rational American diction. But there really is a raging cesspool of vicious propaganda out there, isn’t there?
I remember another thread where a Doper was outraged that Obama humiliated a Marine by having him hold an umbrella over Obama’s head. :eek: (A second Marine who held a second umbrella over a visiting chief-of-state wasn’t mentioned as “humiliated” — was it coincidence that the other chief-of-state was white-skinned? The SDMB buffoon who started the thread didn’t acknowledge his idiocy until photos were linked-to showing Marines humiliated by holding umbrellas for white-skinned Republican Presidents.) In that thread, OP didn’t spot a newspaper photo of the humiliated Marine by himself — it was right-wing media which explicitly instructed him to be outraged.
We hear a lot about Fake News being a problem. The problem is deeper than that. Streep really did say something about Polanski — that “news” isn’t “fake.” A Marine really did hold an umbrella for Obama. Fake News is a subset of a bigger problem that might be called Wrong News.
Welcome to the New America. Gibberish like OP’s complaint now determines our political directions. The details of America’s dysfunction.are quite different from the predictions of Brave New World or 1984, but the dysfunction is just as severe.
AFAICT, koufax may be a sincere and intelligent moderate (he’s almost apologized for OP), yet even he got confuddled by Wrong News.
Heaven help America.
You’ve got to admit both credibility and supposed empathy suffer when one makes noises about claws sinking into their broken heart over an alleged disability-mocking when that same person has previously given a standing ovation to and expressed her love for an admitted child rapist and expressed disdain over his having been jailed. Sort of indicates a fair amount of disingenuousness in her claim of empathy for the mistreated, wouldn’t you say?
I think what we can really take away from Streep’s speech is that if you’re a leftie (with extra gold star points for being an ‘artist’) she will forgive you anything. But if you’re a rightie or a Republican, any sort of mistreatment of another, no matter how mild relatively speaking, is heart-wrenchingly cruel and unforgivable (and by implication, applicable to the attitudes of righties in the main).
Pretty standard left-wing stuff really.
Oh noes! Starving Artist found a hypocrisy! TEH HORRORZ! I guess nothing Streep said could or should ever be taken seriously, and also how reasonable her words are don’t matter, because she obviously couldn’t really mean it because hypocrisy or something.
Now, some might interject, saying that it’s entirely reasonable to hold the president of the united states to a slightly different standard than a movie director. To those fools, I say… "Yeah, good point."Others yet might interject, pointing out the more than decade of time, apparently more than enough time to let Donald Trump completely change his views from his famous “grab him by the pussy” tapes and for his followers to forgive him for bragging about sexual assault (a considerably less heinous crime than supporting a known pedarast), to which I would say… “Yeah, good point”. And further others would point out that this is a pointless distraction meant only as a red herring to try to ignore the real issue, and that thin-skinned republican morons are getting shockingly angry about a celebrity speaking out against them, and that this is insanely hypocritical coming from the party that spent the last year or so bashing “political correctness” and “safe spaces”, and that Trump’s inability to stomach criticism is at this point as well-documented as it is pathetic and hypocritical. You can probably guess my response there.
Actually, no: **the fact that Meryl Streep fifteen years ago applauded an artistic award for a filmmaker who committed statutory rape twenty-five years earlier does not in any way affect the “credibility or empathy” of her remarks about Trump.
The only reason you’re insisting that it does is that you can’t actually refute the remarks themselves, so you’re engaging in a desperate bout of “look over there” to try to distract attention away from them.**
As I’ve said, at least it’s nice that Trump supporters have suddenly discovered that accusations of sexual assault are indeed a serious matter. It would also be nice if they would use some of that newfound indignation to condemn Trump for the acts of sexual assault that he’s been repeatedly accused of.
Moreover, they should bear in mind that their obsessing over Polanski’s crimes, admitted and alleged, is demonstrably not in accordance with the wishes of Polanski’s own victim:
I don’t necessarily agree with Geimer’s lenient interpretation of Polanski’s inexcusable actions (sex that’s not consensual is rape, after all). But at the same time, I think that all the Trump supporters suddenly ostentatiously pretending to care about this incident, just to get a rhetorical stick to beat Streep with, are hypocritically ignoring Geimer’s own expressed wishes:
If Geimer herself doesn’t have a problem with Polanski still working in his chosen field and receiving some professional and artistic admiration from his colleagues, I don’t see why all you hypocritical Trump defenders are taking it upon yourselves to proclaim that Streep’s applause for a Polanski movie automatically undermines her credibility as a political commentator.
Well, actually, I do see why you’re taking it on yourselves to do that, but as I noted above, it’s just a bullshit attempt at a diversionary tactic rather than a valid argument.
Or one might interject that it’s all purely politics and Streep doesn’t give a good damn about someone’s hurt feelings unless she can use them against her political foes, so why should anyone take seriously how damaged her heart was or fearful she is for the future of the country? It’s just mindless politi-babble intended to make the other side look bad, made evident by the fact she’s so aggressively supportive of someone who caused much, much greater hurt and pain, and for a more long-lasting time, than did the righty she so quasi-eloquently whinged about.
Basically Streep’s just doing what we all do: magnify and blow out of proportion/go into hysterics over the wrongs of our enemies while handwaving away or making excuses for the wrongs of our own.
I don’t recall Polanski being a politician, or having a “side” on this issue. And I would seriously question whether Polanski’s statuatory rape caused as much damage as Trump’s dozen or so sexual assaults. But yeah, whatever, no way she’s speaking from the heart here, it’s all politics, because Meryl Streep does a whole lot of “just politics” for the sake of liberals or slagging off republicans.
You’ve missed the point. The important thing about Meryl Streep’s remarks is not her own personal emotions concerning the current political situation, and nobody is trying to claim otherwise. The important thing is her intelligent and reasonable assessment of why the current political situation is a bad thing.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
intended to make the other side look bad
[/quote]
And the reason you’re flailing around so desperately to discredit her is because her remarks do in fact make the other side look bad. Trump’s behavior towards his critics and opponents is consistently immature, retaliatory, spiteful and dickish. Streep is quite right to point out that this is a bad and dangerous thing for political discourse in general.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
she’s so aggressively supportive of someone
[/quote]
Wrong again. Streep is not “aggressively supportive”, or supportive at all, of Polanski’s having committed rape. Being supportive of his work as a filmmaker is not the same thing.
And by the way, here’s a reminder of what Streep was actually talking about. Let’s pause a moment in rebutting the silly non sequiturs of play-posters like koufax and doorhinge and Starving Artist to note the importance of this call to action:
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Is it your opinion that, having applauded Polanski 15 [sic] years ago (and some 25 years after the attack), Streep no longer admires and loves Polanski? If so I refer you to the Youtube clips I posted earlier in which she recently proclaimed her love for him and her disdain that he’d been arrested and put in jail in Switzerland.
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Statutory rape? You clearly don’t have the vaguest idea what you’re talking about. Read the victim’s account and what she told the police sometime and then come back here claiming what happened was consensual.
Actually I just did, in the post above to BPC.
As for the rest of your post, meh. I’m fine with abiding by Geimer’s wishes. She’s been harmed much more by the unending efforts of the law to drag this out virtually forever than she was by the crime itself. Polanski has also apologized to her and paid her a handsome sum as well ($500,000 or so IIRC), which presumably would have set her on a pretty comfortable path to live her life. But I hardly think that, given the unending disregard for her preferences and feelings shown by the legal powers that be, she is being damaged much more by people pointing out Streep’s admiration and support for her rapist than she already has been and is being through the legal system’s nonstop efforts to get Polanski back here for sentencing. If anything, she’s probably pissed off at Streep for a) continually expressing her love and support for Polanski in the first place, and b) pissed off at her even more for so stupidly bringing the whole thing to the fore once again, given her obvious hypocrisy and the imbalance that exists between the wrong that Streep was condemning and the wrong she’s chosen to ignore or minimize in order to throw bouquets at Polanski.
You seem either to have a real problem with reading comprehension, as you have quite a pattern of arguing against things I never said. I said she was aggressively supportive of Polanski, not that she was supportive of his having committed rape. Don’t be ridiculous.
And now I’m out for the night, so you’ll be free to mischaracterize my comments without interference until such time as I can return.
That’s because Polanski’s arrest in Switzerland for US extradition in 2009 on a 31-year-old warrant was widely condemned as unjustified based on the evidence and the status of the case. Which is why Switzerland released him and refused the US extradition request:
The whole crucial issue of this case for the past four decades has been the contention that Polanski had already complied with sentencing in accordance with the conditions of his plea bargain to the statutory rape charge.
:rolleyes: Actually, you’re the one who doesn’t know what you’re talking about, to the extent of apparently not even having read the posts in this thread.
It is a fact, as I said and you would have known if you’d bothered to read more carefully, that the only crime that Polanski has been convicted of is statutory rape. Mind you, as I said and you would have known if you’d bothered to read more carefully, what we know strongly suggests that the rape was not just statutory.
But Trump supporters who insist that we can’t condemn Trump for committing sexual assault because he hasn’t actually been convicted of it don’t get a pass on the hypocrisy of insisting that Polanski must be condemned for committing (non-statutory) sexual assault when he hasn’t actually been convicted of it.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
Actually I just did, in the post above to BPC.
[/quote]
You don’t understand the difference between a refutation and a disagreement. I get that you personally would like to just dismiss Streep’s remarks as meaningless because you don’t like them, but that’s not equivalent to actually refuting what she said.
And my point is that that’s a very important distinction, which you were dishonestly trying to blur.
:dubious: Your imaginative unsupported speculations about what a stranger is feeling are no more plausible in the case of Geimer than they are in the case of Streep.
It’s you and all the other Trump apologists who have “brought the whole thing” about Polanski “to the fore once again”, not Streep. Streep’s criticisms of Trump don’t have jack-shit to do with Streep’s opinions on the Polanski case. The latter would never have come up at all if the Trump supporters hadn’t been so desperate to find some condemnation to throw at her in lieu of being able to actually defend Trump against her statements.
Streep pointed out, quite rightly, that the guy you’re supporting is a spiteful, vindictive bully whose eager courting of the worst tendencies in American xenophobia and authoritarianism is making our political climate more dangerous for millions of law-abiding people. That remains true and relevant no matter what Streep thinks about the completely unrelated topic of Roman Polanski’s forty-year-old sexual assault.
How very Presidential. The man exudes gravitas. Way to go, Republicans.