Last night’s Republican debate followed the familiar pattern, and even more so, of insults and endless crosstalk with the candidates and moderators talking over each other so much that often it was hard to figure out who was saying what. It resembled nothing so much as siblings arguing, with repeated “No, I’m not” “Yes, you are” types of exchanges. Adding to the cacophony was that the audience was even more rowdy, whooping it up even before the candidates were introduced, maintaining a constant background chatter accompanied by boos and cheers and repeated calling out of things that I could not make out. The event can only be described as an embarrassment.
It seemed like Donald Trump was the target of much of the attention by the moderators and rivals and not in a good way, though this time he seemed to have more of the crowd on his side. There was an extended discussion of his legal troubles with his Trump University. Marco Rubio kept attacking him and looked to a large extent like a little lapdog yapping at the ankles of Trump. Trump added to this perception by referring to him as “Little Marco”.
I was thinking of one word that came to mind to describe Rubio and it is ‘brittle’. He grins a lot and speaks fast but there is a nervousness in his eyes. You get the sense that if you push him hard, he will suddenly burst into tears and run from the room, crying out how mean everyone is to him.
The word that best describes Ted Cruz is, of course, ‘loathsome’. He was his usual patronizing and condescending self, asking Trump to relax and take deep breaths when he interrupted him. In return, Trump called him “Lying Ted”.
For Trump the word is “brash”. He boasts, uses irrelevancies to deflect attention, brushes off all criticisms, and simply ignores inconvenient facts.
For John Kasich, the word that comes to mind is “cornpone”. He tries to convey a kind of rural, aw shucks, ‘why can’t we all get along’ vibe that masks the fact that he is as much a right-wing, anti-choice, anti-gay, pro-charter schools, anti-poor warmonger as the rest of them. In fact, at one point he called for sending in troops to Syria and Iraq and Libya and arming groups in Crimea Ukraine that were fighting Russia. More war! What could go wrong?
At the end, they all said that they would support the eventual Republican nominee whoever it was but that kind of pledge is easy for politicians to justify ignoring if they feel the need to do so later.
I had been a little puzzled by some comments by Rubio and others leading up to the debate who spoke about Trump having small hands and fingers. For the life of me, I could not see why this would matter unless Rubio was trying to imply that Trump could not be as tough as he portrayed himself if he did not have the large, roughened hands of a working man. There were even articles that analyzed photographs of Trump’s hands and concluded that his fingers were of average size. The whole thing seemed silly to me and I ignored it.
It was during the debate that it dawned on me that I had completely missed the boat on this and that finger length was being used as either a euphemism for penis size or that there was a belief of some sort of correlation between finger length and penis size. In fact, early in the debate, Trump reassured people that they had nothing to worry about in that department. I am sure that we will all sleep better at night knowing this about the possible leader of the Republican party.
I was curious as to the science behind this idea that finger length correlates with penis size and looked it up an came across this article that says that it is not finger length per se but the ratio of the length of the index finger length to the fourth (ring) finger length that correlates inversely with penis length. So the overall size of the fingers is irrelevant. No doubt fact checkers will use this to compute the size of each candidate’s penis because we would not want a penis gap when it comes to dealing with Putin, Kim Jong Un, and other world leaders, no?
Who says that we are not learning anything from these Republican debates?
Mano, John Oliver discussed a bit of the “finger” nuttiness in his segment on Trump on Sunday. Apparently, quite a few years back, a writer for “Vanity Fair” described Trump as a “short-fingered vulgarian” (though I’m not sure what gave rise to the “short-fingered” part of that phrase) and ever since then Trump has been in the habit of occasionally been sending photos of himself to the editor of VF with his “normally proportioned hands and fingers” circled in gold Sharpie.
Yes, as I was reading this, I was thinking that as Friendly @#1 says, this has to do with the Vanity Fair article. I think the reason so many people bring it up is because apparently, Trump is very sensitive about it.
Or should I type in “Drumpf”? I watched the John Oliver bit and then got his “Drumpfinator” and boy, what a fun app. It turns every instance of the word “Trump” into the word “Drumpf” in my browser, which makes for some real hilarity as I’m reading news articles.
Rubio did get in a good, spontaneous joke though. Earlier on, defending his “evolution”, Trump said how flexible he was. Then later, when Trump tried to interrupt Cruz, there was this exchange:
http://www.vox.com/2016/3/3/11159324/republican-debate-yoga-flexibility
This
Should disqualify Kasich from being president. There are no groups in Crimea proper that are fighting the Russians there.
Across the border in the Ukraine however there are groups of terrorists (well since they are against the Russians and nominally fighting for our side I should really call them rebels or freedom fighters) doing things like blowing up power pylons for the lines going to Crimea and prevent repairs to them.
Who Cares @#4,
Sorry that was my mistake, not Kasich’s. He said Ukraine. I have corrected it.
Is there any way that the audience and/or presenters might energize the debate over Trump’s finger size while egging the conflict on to the point they drop trousers to prove their point? Perhaps urinating to prove the strength of their streams.
The one thing that is telling for me is that if we get a Republican it doesn’t really matter which Republican we get. All of them, with Trump being the only one being shaky on the ideological purity front, have publicly declared that they back the GOP catechism of being for privatizing, deregulating, tax cutting, and welfare cutting and against government effectiveness, equal rights and pay for minorities and women, and any environmental protection not linked with a profit making business.
Kasich is unique only in the mellow tones and reasonable manner of his presentation of the dogmatic and radically bigoted, racist and sexist agenda.
I like the part where the undertaker threw the guy against the ropes, and he came back and whacked him with the chair, and then threw him into the audience.
@1. Friendly :
It might relate to the short fingers deep pockets euphemism of someone who is miserly with their money eg. Pre- Xmas Carol Scrooge although not quite sure how this would relate to the usually ostentatiously “rich” and throwing cash around Trump. Of course it may be that Trump has shallow pockets as well as short fingers ..