In a year in which Trump has often showed bad judgment, one of his smart choices was to stay away from the Kennedy Center on Sunday night. In this case, discretion was the better part of valor, as the ceremony — like the equally cheesy Hollywood, theater, and music-industry awards shows that don’t pretend to be the same as a royal investiture — was an occasion for hours of liberal virtue signaling at Trump’s expense.
.. cheers for television producer Norman Lear. Indeed, it wasn’t entirely clear whether Lear was being honored for giving us Archie Bunker and a passel of shows that mock the prejudices and values of working-class Americans, or if he was being celebrated for his liberal activism.
.. His fellow liberals may have thought that honoring Lear in the first year of the Trump presidency was a way to poke a stick in the eye of the Donald. But the invocation of Lear’s groundbreaking All in the Family also should have given those in attendance food for thought about why it is that so many real-life working-class Americans refused to take the cues they were given by the left-leaning pop-culture world and voted for Trump last year.
.. His fellow liberals may have thought that honoring Lear in the first year of the Trump presidency was a way to poke a stick in the eye of the Donald. But the invocation of Lear’s groundbreaking All in the Family also should have given those in attendance food for thought about why it is that so many real-life working-class Americans refused to take the cues they were given by the left-leaning pop-culture world and voted for Trump last year.
.. His fellow liberals may have thought that honoring Lear in the first year of the Trump presidency was a way to poke a stick in the eye of the Donald. But the invocation of Lear’s groundbreaking All in the Family also should have given those in attendance food for thought about why it is that so many real-life working-class Americans refused to take the cues they were given by the left-leaning pop-culture world and voted for Trump last year.
.. For the television audience that will watch the show when it appears later this month on CBS, this will confirm what grassroots conservatives and working-class voters already thought about Trump’s critics. Displays like this are why so many Americans have stopped listening to sermons from their supposed betters in the arts. If liberals want to make a case against Trump that his voters will listen to, they are going to have to stop talking down to them.
The Netflix show, more than any other Marvel product, explores the idea that the country’s systems are fundamentally broken.
.. The Punisher, Netflix and Marvel’s new 13-episode drama about a superhero whose superpower is killing people with guns
.. Punisher, a former Marine Corps sniper, turned the merciless tactics of organized criminals against them, displaying no qualms about executing gangsters. He employed what amounted to an arsenal of military-grade weapons.
.. Hardcore fans of the comic-book Punisher, who include a large number of veterans and cops, love him because he’s simple. He takes no prisoners; he embodies eye-for-an-eye vengeance. The Punisher, though, wants to emphasize that it’s more complicated
—that Frank’s bleak agenda springs directly from the fact that all the systems he encounters are fundamentally broken.
.. It’s a fascinating indictment of the American government, which, the show argues, trains young men as killers and then casts them aside.
.. Without reliable institutions to believe in, The Punisher suggests, people create their own
.. “The system let Frank down in a big way,” Curtis explains at one point. “So he did what he was trained to do.”
.. What makes The Punisher most interesting, though, is that it’s clear Frank finds pleasure in killing. It’s the logical extension of all his years of training, the manifestation of his id, and it makes the most violent scenes more disturbing than heroic.
Simon: Porn itself — even beyond the actual pornography, even beyond the actual dirty movies and the dirty pictures — it changed the way we look at ourselves, the way men look at women, the way women respond to the reality of what’s in men’s brains at this point.
We don’t sell anything without using the tropes of pornography. We don’t sell beer or cars or blue jeans without in some way referencing a lot of what has become normalized imagery and normalized culture through the ubiquity of pornography over the last 50 years.
It’s been a long time. It’s been half a century that this stuff has been in the ether. … The “pornographication” of America has been profound. You don’t have a multibillion-dollar industry operating every year and not have it transform the way we think about ourselves and each other.
Mr. Trump asked Mr. Spicer to stay on as press secretary, reporting to Mr. Scaramucci. But Mr. Spicer rejected the offer, expressing his belief that
Mr. Scaramucci’s hiring would add to the confusion and uncertainty already engulfing the White House,
according to two people with direct knowledge of the exchange.
The president’s health care effort foundered in the Senate last week, and next week promises no respite, with his son
Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, due to testify before Congress on questions about their contacts with Russia.
His rapport with the president establishes a new power center in a building already bristling with rivalry.
The president has no intention of changing his behavior — he merely believes his communications staff needs to defend him better — and Mr. Scaramucci even suggested his role would be to unshackle an already unfettered president.
.. “We have accomplished so much, and we are being given credit for so little,” he said. “The good news is the people get it, even if the media doesn’t.”
.. He had hoped to last a year as press secretary. He quit after six months and a day.
.. The eventual appointment of Mr. Scaramucci was backed by the president’s daughter
Ivanka,
Mr. Kushner and the commerce secretary,
Wilbur Ross
.. Mr. Kushner has grown increasingly critical of both Mr. Spicer and Mr. Priebus, whom he regards as party establishment figures who operate out of self-interest.
.. Mr. Priebus and Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s chief strategist, both strongly opposed the appointment of Mr. Scaramucci — in large part because he enjoys an easy banter and direct line to Mr. Trump, potentially threatening their positions
Mr. Trump, aggravated by their opposition, dressed the pair down in a testy Oval Office exchange around the time he decided to offer Mr. Scaramucci — known in Trump’s circle as “The Mooch” — the job.
.. one of the reasons he hired Mr. Scaramucci was to cut down on anonymous leaking — and took a swipe at his two advisers.
.. He asked them how the leaks were happening, according to a person familiar with the discussions, and called Mr. Spicer a “good guy” who leaks only when told to by Mr. Priebus.
.. He is said to be especially high on Sebastian Gorka, a blustery foreign policy official who has been accused of having ties to far-right groups in Europe.
.. Mr. Priebus urged Mr. Trump to hire Mr. Spicer and another lieutenant, Katie Walsh, as deputy chief of staff. But Ms. Walsh left the White House after a short time when Mr. Kushner and other West Wing officials forced her out
.. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump had told people that Mr. Spicer was no longer “tough,” one of the harshest insults he can level
.. Mr. Spicer told friends he was tired of being blindsided by Mr. Trump, and weary of Mr. Trump’s constant criticism.
.. He instituted the highly contentious practice of holding off-camera briefings, less so to snub reporters than to avoid Mr. Trump’s critiques of his performance