Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Diogenes' AssHat of the Year Award 2016

This years Award Winner has long been on the  radar, but was edged out in past years for recognition by the remarkable American Asshatry of the likes of Michael Moore,  Paul Krugman and Dingy Harry Reid.  But, like a great football team in a fourth quarter comeback, I was delighted to read a post at NewsBusters titled "Snob Alert: NPR Star's 'Surprisingly Vicious' Trump Attack, that sealed the deal for this years award winner. 

I first became aware of our award winner while working part-time in college as a weekend board-op for Louisiana Public broadcasting. At first I admired his wit and writing ability. But not being actually raised in the south, I detected a sometime not so thinly veiled snobbish elitist dislike of the South and all things southern in his satire. Backwards we are...unduly religious....and we got GUNS. It played well to his audience, mostly white bread northern liberals.

Years later, after an illness ceased production of his weekly broadcast and believing he had nothing to lose, I read a magazine interview and all my suspension were confirmed. He pontificated from his taxpayer subsidized ivory tower of the uneducated voters in "parts of the country." That terrorism was "all our fault". That right-of-center thought was "dangerous to the country"....that we should be more like our enlightened neighbors to the north.  

Now, late in life with his fortune secure, he eloquently speaks of the election on behalf of the "correct" people in America.  And whether he knows it or not, he has reached heights of fame he never dreamed:  Diogenes' AssHat of the Year...... Garrison Keillor.



NB - Longtime National Public Radio star Garrison Keillor just finished four decades on state-subsidized radio on A Prairie Home Companion. For almost that long, he's been an easy example of a pretentious liberal snob, precisely the kind who seriously loathes a Donald Trump. If NPR ever wanted to wonder why they haven't been granted a Trump interview, it's because he knows NPR is an elite liberal sandbox for people who congratulate themselves on their marvelous taste and mental acuity.

So when Keillor penned an acidulous character assassination of Trump for the Chicago Tribune, the liberals were very pleased. At Vox.com, they raved "Most pundits who attack Trump denounce him as racist, dangerous, and authoritarian. But Keillor does something that is probably much more likely to get under the billionaire’s skin: He makes him look pathetic."
"The cap does not look good on you, it's a duffer's cap, and when you come to the microphone, you look like the warm-up guy, the guy who announces the license number of the car left in the parking lot, doors locked, lights on, motor running. The brim shadows your face, which gives a sinister look, as if you'd come to town to announce the closing of the pulp factory. Your eyes look dead and your scowl does not suggest American greatness so much as American indigestion. Your hair is the wrong color: People don't want a president to be that shade of blond...." 
Then comes the snobbery, that Trump's obnoxious show of wealth is overcompensating for never being cool with the Jews:
"The New York Times treats you like the village idiot. This is painful for a Queens boy trying to win respect in Manhattan where the Times is the Supreme Liberal Jewish Anglican Arbiter of Who Has The Smarts and What Goes Where. When you came to Manhattan 40 years ago, you discovered that in entertainment, the press, politics, finance, everywhere you went, you ran into Jews, and they are not like you: Jews didn't go in for big yachts and a fleet of aircraft — they showed off by way of philanthropy or by raising brilliant offspring. To the Times, Queens is Cleveland. Bush league. You are Queens. The casinos were totally Queens, the gold faucets in your triplex, the bragging, the insults, but you wanted to be liked by Those People. You wanted Mike Bloomberg to invite you to dinner at his townhouse. You wanted the Times to run a three-part story about you, that you meditate and are a passionate kayaker and collect 14th-century Islamic mosaics. You wish you were that person but you didn't have the time...."
"You didn't have the time" to be an enlightened progressive". Keillor imagines that Trump is a very unhappy billionaire, and that nobody likes him, nobody who matters:
"You own a lot of big houses and you wander around in them, followed by a waiter, a bartender, a masseuse, three housekeepers, and a concierge, and they probably gossip about you behind your back. Just like nine-tenths of your campaign staff. You're losing and they know it and they're telling mean stories about you to everybody and his brother. You toss out those wisecracks on Twitter and the Earth shakes and your ratings among white suburban women with French cookware declined. The teleprompter is not your friend. You are in the old tradition of locker room ranting and big honkers in the steam room, sitting naked, talking man talk, griping about the goons and ginks and lousy workmanship and the uppity broads and the great lays and how you vanquished your enemies at the bank.
Meanwhile, you keep plugging away. It's the hardest work you've ever done. You walk out in the white cap and you rant for an hour about stuff that means nothing and the fans scream and wave their signs and you wish you could level with them for once and say one true thing: I love you to death and when this is over I will have nothing that I want...." Read More
Surprisingly vicious for a red shoed ninnymuggins wouldn't you say?