Canada jolted.



ADDED: Why are people referring to that makeup as "brownface"? It's as dark as any blackface I've seen. I know, he says it was an Aladdin costume, but doesn't that make it worse? He was overdarkening for the character he purported to play.

Fox News headline: "CNN's Don Lemon knocks Trump while praising Justin Trudeau's apology over brownface photo."
"I shouldn't have done that. I should have known better, but I didn't and I'm really sorry," Trudeau told reporters. "I take responsibility for my decision to do that. I shouldn't have done that. I should've known better. It was something that I didn't think was racist at the time but now I recognize that it was something racist to do and I'm deeply sorry."...

"Wow, a leader apologizing. It seems odd, doesn't it?" Lemon reacted. "Because we have one who doesn't.... I do have to say this before we go: think about it however you want to think about it. When someone apologizes- wow!... We don't often see that here, especially in a world leader who is saying 'I should've known better and I'm sorry.' You can feel about it however you want, but that, to me, that does mean a lot."
As if Don Lemon would honor an apology from Trump! Trump doesn't apologize because it wouldn't work. It would backfire. Trudeau seems to be apologizing because it's the only approach he can come up with. The question is whether apologies are going to be accepted, and who believes they'll be accepted equally, regardless of which side you're on vis a vis the the apologizer? It's like calls for civility. In present-day American political discourse, they're always about getting the other side to tone it down. That's why my tag for the discussion of civility is "civility bullshit." I feel the same way about calls for apologies (within present-day American political discourse). They're always bullshit.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

“2020 Democratic candidate Sen. Kamala Harris asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in a Tuesday letter to consider suspending President Trump's account...”

“... for violating its user agreement with his tweets about the Ukraine whistleblower and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).... Harris accused Trump of violating Twitter's rule that users ‘may not threaten violence against an individual or a group of people’ by falsely accusing the Ukraine whistleblower of ‘spying’ and Schiff of treason. The California senator called the tweets ‘blatant threats’ ...” Axios reports. It’s helpful to know that Harris’s orientation is to suppress freedom of speech. Her own political speech has proven quite ineffectual, so it’s in her self-interest to shut down the speech of others. Whether she’s into restricting speech for personal reasons or whether she pure-heartedly seeks the greater good through censorship, it’s a bad orientation to display as you’re running for President. I’m certainly glad she has the freedom of speech to express that lousy thinking, though. What she’s said puts her out of the running for my vote. (And, yes, I know Twitter is a
Read more

“According to an excerpt, the president privately suggested to aides that soldiers shoot migrants in the legs, but he was told it would be illegal.”

BBC reports on the book, “Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration” (written by NYT reporters and published by the NYT): Mr Trump suggested other extreme measures, according to the book. "Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh," reads the extract. Assuming — only for the sake of argument —  that the unnamed interviewees got these facts right, I would still need to have a feeling for the kind of brainstorming that was going on. This could have been lightweight banter or some way of getting to useful ideas by first loosening up and just saying every crazy thing you could think of, as if you were pitching movie ideas. Trump might have talked about a snake pit or an alligator moat, but how did he talk about it? Context is everything here, the
Read more