Trump’s latest tweet is bullying, inappropriate, insulting, etc. But how is it vulgar? His comment about Megyn Kelly … “blood coming out of her… whatever” clearly was vulgar, but I don’t understand why blood per se would be. I have tried searching for slang meanings of “face lift”, etc. but can’t figure it out.
Here are definitions of “vulgar” from one source:
*Crudely indecent.
Deficient in taste, delicacy, or refinement.
Marked by a lack of good breeding; boorish. *
The second one definitely applies to the tweet, and there are many who believe the third one applies to the tweeter.
Yeah. “Vulgar” doesn’t only mean “related to sex or sex organs”.
Which tweet are we talking about?
Mika Brzezinski hosts a MSNBC show called Morning Joe. There as a comment on the show Trump didn’t like. So he tweeted:
*I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came…
…to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!*
NM-Response not proper for this forum.
This is the tweet in question (actually two tweets)
He was upset because her boyfriend apparently said something mean about him, so he attacked her and exposed the fact that she had had a facelift. My mother would definitely call that vulgar.
Etymology dictionary is your friend:
[Quote=Online Etymology Dictionary]
late 14c., “common, ordinary,” from Latin vulgaris, *volgaris *“of or pertaining to the common people, common, vulgar, low, mean,” from *vulgus *"the common people, multitude, crowd, throng
[/quote]
So, “vulgar” mostly means “common”, in the way that certain Southern ladies might sniff and say “that’s so common.”
Actually Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist are the hosts.
Good god - to think that some people think it is a good thing that we have a president who expresses himself like this! :smack:
Mark Kornblau, who’s a spokesman for NBC news, wrote, "Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’ "
Etymology is interesting, but meanings change over time, often dramatically.
Look in a current dictionary for today’s meaning.
Etymology is for entertainment purposes only.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary counts as a current dictionary, doesn’t it?
(bolding mine)
I wonder if I need Mr. Kornblau’s permission to use that as a sig.
While true, I’m not sure how this applies. Characterizing the tweet as “vulgar” seems to be congruous with how I hear people using the word “vulgar” these days: most often to refer to something as crass and uncouth.
While “vulgar” usually means “a crude, sexual reference”, I’ve always understood it to have also retained its original meaning of “common” or “pertaining to the common, unrefined, folk”. Many of Trumps tweets fall into that latter category-- things one might expect to hear in a bowling alley, but not the hallowed halls of the WH (at least not in public).
Well, in my experience, it doesn’t necessarily mean “sexual” to me at all. Perhaps I’ve just misunderstood it all these years, but I’ve always known it to mean “coarse” or something not said/done in “polite” company. Sex isn’t part of my understanding, as I know it. If I heard someone described as “vulgar,” I just think they’ve got a potty mouth or are otherwise rude, not some sort of sexual deviant.
Sexual in the sense of using vulgar sexual terms. Fuck you, you little cunt.
Actually, Mika’s response was priceless. It was a picture of a cheerio box with a little kid reaching for a cheerio. Over the picture is printed “made for little hands.”
I think this is a pretty good tweet; I can see it being effective. It emphasizes the fakeness, the superficiality of the news and also hints at newspeople having different values/priorities than much of the voting public. For better or worse, it associates Mika with plastic surgery. Not that plastic surgery is inherently bad, but it does point to a certain vanity that goes along with a different life style that has little to do with the lives of many people.