Most Republican leaders, in their concern to defend the president from accusations of racist over his terming African nations and Haiti “shithole countries” and saying “get them out”, have resorted to one of two strategies:
- Fake news. He didn’t say it, and it’s outrageous to suggest that he did.
- Harsh but true. He did say it, and it shows how forthright and unconcerned he is with liberal pieties.
Neither is entirely satisfactory. It is natural, then, that a Fox News correspondent, in the spirit of Freud’s “kettle logic“, combines the two:
I think it’s either fake news or if it’s true, this is how the forgotten men and women in America talk at the bar.
The bar is the new locker room. It’s kind of weird, though, when the best defense for the president’s behaviour is, he’s talking in the formal setting of a negotiation with senators the way even average uneducated Americans would only talk in a private setting when somewhat inebriated.
Common Infirmities 