More evidence, if you needed it, that Trump lacks any grace

It has log been obvious that serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) is a sociopath with no concept of how to treat people as human beings. If you oppose him, he will attack you viciously. If you are nice to him, he will say nice things about you, although he will not do nice things for you. He is purely transactional in his relationships and if you switch from being a rival to a supporter, he will stop saying nasty things and say nice things. There are no principles involved at all.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the way he treated his rivals. Although he is not the president, right from the beginning he was like an incumbent when it came to seeking the Republican nomination. and hence he enjoyed a huge lead from the get-go and was never threatened by any of his rivals. He could have just coasted along knowing that they would drop out eventually and endorse him.
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Sex work should be legalized and destigmatized

Kal Penn, this week’s guest host of The Daily Show, talked about the need to legalize sex work and highlighted how in Nevada they have done so with good results. Apparently Maine has also just decriminalized sex work. Let’s hope the movement spreads.

Although strippers are not sex workers, they too suffer from considerable stigma and hence are deprived of some of the protections that other workers enjoy and thus can be exploited and abused by the management of the places they work in and also by the clientele. Adam Conover, a big advocate of unions, had an interesting discussion with two strippers who unionized their place of work so that they could address these abuses.

Undermining the model minority myth

Kal Penn, this week’s guest host on The Daily Show, did his bit to undermine the model minority myth by having a discussion on politics with a group of Indian-Americans, in which most of the men revealed themselves to be utterly smug, self-satisfied, opinionated, arrogant, and ignorant, older versions of Vivek Ramaswamy. I wish I could suggest that Penn had picked a particularly obnoxious group but my own experience with other people from the Indian subcontinent, including Sri Lankans, supports the view that of course while not everyone is like that, the negative impression that especially the older men gave is not at all uncommon.

Film review: The Duke (2022)

I recently watched this nice little comedy set in 1961 that stars Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren in which Broadbent plays a working class character who keeps losing his job and getting into trouble because of his efforts to fight for those whom he sees as being unfairly treated, such as old pensioners and disabled veterans of wars, trying to get the government to waive for them the licensing fees that the owners of every television must pay the government and which goes towards funding the BBC.

This film is based on the life of a real person Kempton Bunton and the theft of a painting of the Duke of Wellington that was stolen from the National Gallery, and the trial of Bunton for stealing it. (The link has spoilers for the film.) It is a film that gets its laughs from the behavior of the characters, not from jokes, and Broadbent and Mirren, two excellent actors, have the skills to make the most of their roles.

Here’s the trailer.

One thing I was curious about was how Bunton was able to get a high-powered barrister to represent him at his trial since he clearly would not have been able to afford one. Since this theft really happened, I looked Bunton up and found a link to the lawyer Jeremy Hutchinson who had a privileged background with an elite education that led to an illustrious career and was married at the time to the already-famous actress Peggy Ashcroft.

I do not know the British legal aid system and how this came to be. Maybe because Bunton’s case gained a great deal of notoriety at the time and he became something of a folk hero, a Robin Hood type fighting the establishment, Hutchinson provided his services pro bono.

Vivek Ramaswamy creates a new facet of the model minority myth

As an immigrant from South Asia I am of course familiar with the model minority myth that surrounds that community, that we are high achievers in many areas (other than sports), from mathematics to science to business to spelling. But Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has created a new frontier, that we can also be world-class assholes.

Desi Lydic of The Daily Show has a nice compilation showing how Ramaswamy tries to be everything to everyone, to ingratiate himself with diverse groups of people while at the same time having a repellent personality.

I do not normally use words like ‘asshole’ but frankly, I could not find a better descriptor for him. The word ‘jerk’ simply does not do justice to how disgustingly smug, arrogant, and annoying he is. My ire may be also greater because he and I share the same ethnicity of being Tamils, although he is from India and I from Sri Lanka. I would hate for people to think that he and I are alike in other ways too, which is what ethnic stereotyping tends to do.

The latest bonkers Republican debate

The debate on Wednesday debate involving the four remaining candidates for the Republican presidential nomination other than serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), saw most of them trying hard to claim the title of the main challenger to SSAT. This article summarized the main points.

The explosive fourth Republican presidential debate Wednesday night made plain why former President Donald Trump has so far skipped the 2024 primary debate circuit.

The four contenders onstage — former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — spent most of the two-hour debate hammering each other, overshadowing efforts to focus attention on the frontrunner in the race.

With the smallest debate field so far and with Iowa’s caucuses less than six weeks away, the candidates were better able to showcase their policy beliefs and explore major differences, but they followed the pattern of previous debates with a series of memorable personal shots.

Ramaswamy referred to Haley as “lipstick on a Dick Cheney.” Christie mocked Ramaswamy’s “smartass mouth.” DeSantis said Haley “caves every time the left comes after her.”

An AP article noted this interesting point: “By the end, moderators asked candidates which previous president inspired them. No one named Trump.” SSAT will not be pleased,

Will Saletan describes himself as a political moderate who now does not have a home because the Republican party is bonkers. He summarizes some of the evidence for this that he heard during the debate.

I’M A MODERATE. In 2018, I voted for Larry Hogan, Maryland’s Republican governor. Four years later, when Republicans nominated an election denier to replace him, I voted for the Democratic nominee, Wes Moore. Give me a sensible conservative party, and I’ll consider it. But that’s not what I’m seeing in Congress or in this year’s Republican presidential debates.
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THE REPUBLICAN PARTY’S INSANITY leaves a big hole in this country. When progressives jerk their knees on one issue or another—deriding religious parents, overdoing COVID restrictions, calling every border-control policy racist—I’d like to hear alternative ideas from a sane conservative party. Instead, what we have is an extremist, authoritarian party in which—as Kelly essentially acknowledged—the one presidential candidate who tells the truth and adheres to principle has no chance of being nominated.

On The Daily Show, this week’s guest host Charlamagne Tha God highlighted some of the points raised, focussing on the most bonkers of the four, Vivek Ramaswamy, who endorsed a whole list of wacky conspiracy theories.