@johnfabian comments on "Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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jeroboam 9mo ago

Normalizing Donald Trump.

I just watched this video in which golfer Bryson DeChambeau plays best ball with Donald Trump to see if they can shoot under 50 on the short tees in an 18 hole golf course.

First of all, for those people who think Donald Trump sucks at golf, you're wrong and you have TDS. He's an extremely good golfer. Actually, ridiculously good. Multiple times, the duo used his shot over Bryson's. Combined, they shot 22 under par. Even if you think he's literally Hitler, he's extremely good at golf. If you don't think so, it might be worthwhile to examine why you think that. Watch the video and update your priors.

But the bigger CW angle is how a mainstream celebrity (Bryson is maybe the biggest golf player today) played a round with Donald, gave him a lot of respect, and just treated him as a normal, chill dude. And Donald reciprocated in kind. Bryson isn't overtly political and he said he'd be happy to play with Biden (lol) too.

https://x.com/b_dechambeau/status/1815447305467970034

There has been a massive effort to delegitimize Trump as a candidate, to make voting for him beyond the pale even if you mostly agree with his platform. But videos like this completely obliterate those efforts. He becomes human. Maybe if you have 12 piercings and purple hair Trump would seem unappealing in this video. But to a normal person, he just seems like a decent hang who is remarkably, extraordinarily good at golf.

The stigma is no longer there. People are coming out of the closet. And I think when it comes down to it, Trump is just way cooler than Kamala, even if he's old. It's said that the more charismatic candidate always wins. In 2020, there were some unique circumstances that made this not true. But if the Democrats cannot maintain the cordon sanitaire around Trump, it's over. He's just too likeable.

Context

FiveHourMarathon Wawa Nationalist jeroboam 9mo ago · Edited 9mo ago

I'm just going to throw a bunch of quotes from the excellent Rick Reilly book Who's Your Caddy? in here. In the book, Sports Illustrated off-beat journalist Reilly set out to caddy for various people. He caddied at the Masters, he caddied for a blind guy, he caddied for Jon Daly, he caddied on the LPGA tour, and he caddied for Donald Trump. The book came out in 2007, so we're talking long before Trump Derangement Syndrome; long before anyone would have been offended by Trump's politics because no one at the time took Trump all that seriously. This isn't just pre-escalator, this is pre-birtherism because Barack Obama was still a longshot to run for President when they were on the course and nobody gave a shit where he was born, the Capitol Steps were still doing Hillary Clinton's I'm Gonna Run to the tune of Pink's I'm Coming Out because Hillary was the inevitable 2008 nominee for the Democrats. It was Her Turn. Democratic vs Republican interplay was Liz Lemon snipping at Jack Donaghy and Jack rolling his eyes at her. Reilly was just writing about this cooky rich celebrity he played golf with once.

I've condensed a lot of line breaks and paragraphs to make it easier in this format. Some emphasis added for money quotes.

The introduction to the chapter...

You do not interview Trump. You just try to be in the Doppler radar when his tornado blows by and sucks you in. You needn't even ask a question. Trump will take over from here. Your job is to simply try to keep your hat on and your Bic working. At the end of a 12-hour day, you will be spit out of a black stretch limo on a Manhattan street corner, unsure of what you've seen, your notes scattered, your mind severely Trumped. So you try to piece it together. Was it real? Any of it? All of it? So many lies. So many truths. So much bullshit. So much beauty. It all rolls into one colossal Trumpalooza.

While Reilly is around, Trump shoots a commercial for McDonald's:

MCDONALD'S IS HERE to film a commercial. All Trump has to do is eat a Big and Tasty and attest to its deliciousness. For this he gets $1 million. If it runs more than 3 months, he gets another million. But this is not what Trump is excited about. He's excited about the little yellow card McDonald's has given him. “With this little baby, I can eat McDonald's free the rest of my life!” he announces. “They say there are only nine in the world, Baby. Michael Jordan's got one, too. So I can be totally tapped out, fucking broke, living on the street, and still be able to eat!” Thank God. We won't have to throw a telethon.

Trump does not quite understand the concept of the book Reilly is writing...

PROBLEM IS, TRUMP wants you to play instead of caddy. He seems to want this more than anything else in the world. He's already got his caddy, Billy, ready to go—“Best caddy in the world!” he declares—and since the EuroBabe and Tiffany don't even play, Trump would have to play by himself and he just won't have that under any circumstances. You don't get the feeling Trump is a guy who requires a lot of personal quiet time. “But, see, the book isn't about playing, it's about caddying for—” “Did I tell you Bruce Willis is a member here? And Sylvester Stallone. And Rudy Giuliani. And . . .” So that settles that. “Any chance maybe you'd have a game tomorrow I could caddy for?” I ask. Trump stops and looks me square in the eye. “Believe me,” Trump says. “One day of me is enough.”

Reilly goes into the history of Trump's golf courses, hitting some highlights...

This story is absolutely true, though: When architect Jim Fazio, slightly less famous brother of architect Tom Fazio, was finished looking at the property and drawing up plans, he called Trump and said, “We can have 16 great holes.” “Whaddya mean, 16?” Trump says. Fazio explained that there wasn't enough land for the first two holes he wanted to build. “Why not?!” Trump bellowed. “Because people's houses are there,” Fazio said. Trump told Fazio to hold, picked up the phone, called somebody, and bought the houses. Fazio got his holes. You think Fazio doesn't know how to play his Trump?

My aunt asked me the other day, if Trump invited me to lunch would I say yes. And I said absolutely, and you're an idiot if you say no. I'm absolutely convinced that on a minor policy matter, something Trump has never really thought about or understood, anyone with a strong verbal IQ has at least a 50/50 shot at convincing Trump to take a stand on anything. I don't think I could change his position on Abortion, or Ukraine, but I could totally get Trump to try to federally ban that annoying voice at self checkout.

Trump also uses building his course as an opportunity to sneak advantages...

Building your own course must be more fun than being locked in a room with the Rockettes and a box of Lady Gillettes. For instance, Trump insisted the range be built between the 9th green and the 10th tee. See, when he's playing badly, he likes to go to the range and figure out what's wrong. It's quite illegal, but what are you gonna do? He's Da Boss.

A bunch of softball anecdotes I just thought were fun...

TRUMP REALLY DOES love golf. When asked to list the top 10 things that helped him climb his way back from $9.2 billion in debt in the 1990s—the largest financial comeback in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records—Trump's No. 1 was: “Play golf.” “It helped me relax and concentrate,” he once wrote. “It took my mind off my troubles.” See, at that point in his life, he didn't get the free cheeseburgers.

“Trump let the LPGA host the ADT Championship there in November 2001. This is the tour wrapup for the top 30 women, with a $1 million purse. And, boy, did Trump put on the dog for them. And, boy, did the players put out the snarls for Trump. “It was awful,” says LPGA player Nancy Scranton. “It was tricked up. It was contrived, ridiculous, and stupid. He kept going around, pestering everybody: ‘Is this the toughest course you've ever played? Is it? Is it?' But, I have to admit, Mar-a-Lago was beautiful and Donald was a wonderful host.” Trump decreed that some of the mounds in front of lakes be mowed down to the height of cue balls so that short shots would all roll right back into the water. Trump was like a little boy melting ants with a magnifying glass. “I kept going around asking them, ‘When was the last time you scored this high?' And they kept saying, ‘When I was nine.' " During the first round, Trump walked right down the middle of the fairway with the players, who would sooner be followed by wolf-whistling construction workers than Trump. “You'd think he'd have better things to do,” grumbled Annika Sorenstam, the tour's best player. When Sorenstam tripled the first hole, Trump said, “Oops, looks like she just threw up on herself. You know, we could make this course more difficult if we wanted.”

Then there was the whole prison incident. According to written reports, inmates at the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex, which is close to Trump International's third hole, got word that women pros were just across the way. So they started screaming things that might make hockey players blush, much less LPGA players. “That never happened!” Trump yells. “Never happened! That was put out by my enemies. The wall of the prison that faces the course doesn't even have windows!” Still, he put up a huge row of 200 palm trees to serve as a barrier. Cost him $1 million, which is a lot for something that never happened.

JUST A WORD on Trump's hair. There are those who do not like Trump's hair. My softball buddy, B-Square, asks, “The guy is worth billions, so all I can figure is that he must want to look like that!” And I admit, when I asked Trump to let me caddy for him, I was thinking maybe we would need a separate caddy for the hair. Up close, though, it is much less threatening and possibly real. It resembles red cotton candy. It seems to have been spun off a wheel and then fired. Maybe it's fiberglass. Remember making model cars when you were a kid, how the glue froze in cool, solid wisps? That is Trump's hair. I cannot imagine the teams of artists it must take to do his hair each day, but I know they must arrive by the busload. Somehow they've managed to make his hair look like the moment when you open a bottle of aspirin and you can't quite get the cotton ball out and it only comes partially out, all teased. That's Trump's hair.

And something Reilly got completely wrong in retrospect...

YOU EXPECT TRUMP to be a cad. You expect him to have a new woman every weekend. But this is four years now I've seen him at fights and Super Bowls and galas with the same woman—the zipper-busting Miss Melania. Here's a guy who owns a piece of the Miss Universe pageant and the Miss USA pageant—“I bought Miss Universe for $10 million,” he says, unsolicited. “I've already made $100 million in ad revenue on it”—and yet he stays with the same woman. Why isn't that in Guinness? True, staying faithful to Miss Melania is like staying true to your Ferrari Testarossa, but still, think of the opportunities!”

And now, finally, to the actual game of golf they played together...

TRUMP PLAYS GOLF fast. And well. We're on 11 and he still hasn't missed a fairway. OK, there's been a stray mulligan or two, but mostly he hits it low and far and straight. On 3, he drove it 310 yards, I kid you not. Three hundred and 10. Man is 56 years old. Doesn't matter how much hellajack you've got, you can't buy a golf game. He owns the joint so he parks the cart all the places he wants the rest of the world not to—edges of greens and backs of tee boxes. This makes for a very fast round. We will end up going 18 in three hours and 15 minutes and that includes stopping often to harangue the stonemason, the path paver, and the greenskeeper to redo the bricks, or retrim a tree, or repave a path that is not absolutely, immaculately Trumpalicious.

Reilly immediately admits that Trump is good, but he does take mulligans consistently. Which is no big deal. There's also something inherently Trumpian about parking the car where you aren't supposed to park the cart. If Barack Obama owned a golf course, he would follow the rules more closely than anyone, would agonize over making sure he never failed to repair a single divot. This is both a source of Trump's flaws, and a signal example of his basic humanity.

More on Trump's golf game and tendency to tell absolute whoppers...

DID YOU EVER have a friend in high school who would just tell you the most outrageous lies? Stuff like, “You know, my aunt is Farrah Fawcett.” And you and your buddies give him a wedgie because you know it will turn out like it always turns out, which is that his aunt once had a friend who k“new the lady who cut Farrah Fawcett's hair. Well, Trump is that kid, constantly making you write outrageous, stupid, impossible things he says into your notebook, accompanied by a scrawled CHECK THIS!!! But then—against all logic—most of them turn out to be true!

HERE'S ONE: TRUMP says he won the club championship at Trump International. Now he is a very good player. He ain't no 3, as he's been listed in business magazines, but he's a good 6, and at 7, I'd take him all day for a partner, loser sweeps the streets of Baghdad for a year. I'd even say he is the best-playing billionaire I know. However, I just don't see him winning a club championship. But damned if it didn't check out: In the first year of the club, he won the match-play championship. The guy who lost to him in the final said, “I thought I should let him win the first year. I didn't want him to raise my dues.” Stuff like that torques Trump's rump. If he wins, they let him. If he loses, he's a big blowhard. “Guys call me all the time, they want to come beat me at golf. So I'll bet some guy and he'll beat me and he'll go back to his club and brag to everybody about how he whipped Donald Trump's ass. What he doesn't mention is the five shots a side I gave him.”

On Trump the man...

YOU CAN SEE why his ex-wives still sort of like him. The man is flamboyant, creative, energetic, unpredictable, fun, and nuts. I mean, yes, everybody over the age of six sees how attention-needy he is, how full of himself he is, how if the conversation strays from him for 15 seconds, he lassoes it back around to himself. But you can also tell that at least half of him knows it and is chuckling right along with you. Yeah, he requires a lot of attention, but at least there's a lot to attend to. He's Big and Tasty—a complete whopper of a personality.

And the section on Trump's scoring fibs, tendency to give himself puts, chip ins, mulligans, best balls, and outright lies on his scorecard.

WHEN A MAN exaggerates, stretches, and twists the truth into origami every other 30 seconds, you're pretty much expecting him to cheat like a monkey in golf. So, yeah, Trump fudges. And he pencils. And he smudges. But at least he does it openly. Nothing worse than a sneak cheat. For instance, on the par-5 16th hole, I hit it close for a birdie 4 and he was still off the green, pin high in 4. So he says, “Great birdie! This is good, right?” and scoops it up with his wedge. First guy in history to give himself a chip-in. But I know a lot of big-time, seven-figure-a-year businessmen who do this. You think messing with the bottom line stops in the budget reports? It's like Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist Steve Hummer once wrote: “According to a recent survey, 82 percent of corporate execs cheat at golf. It can also be extrapolated that 18 percent cheat on surveys.” What are you going to do, call the marshal? It's his course, his club, his world. And besides, he fixed my driver swing. “You're coming over the top instead of under with that driver“ he said. “Try it like this . . .” and he repaired my monster driver slice, just like that. What's funny is what Trump does vs. what Trump says. “Make sure you write that I play my first ball,” he says. “You don't get a second ball in this life.” And that's true, except for on 1 and 13 and 17. And he also says, “I don't like to take putts. That's not a true reflection of a man's score.” And that's true, too, except for the putts he took on every other hole, plus the occasional chip-in, and, of course, the one time he said, “I made a 5, but give me a 4. I've got to take at least one newspaper 4 today.” Again, at least he's out front with it. He shot 36-39–75. And thus you see how Trump's game is 80-proof. Not that he wasn't good enough to beat me. I shot 45-38–83. Trump acted like I had just shot 59 at Pine Valley. “I'm just so damn impressed!” he hollered. “You are the King! The way you hit it, you really ought to consider the Senior Tour!” He is saying this as I'm paying him the $10 I lost to him.

And wrapping up...

Loved Trump. Loved the lies. Loved the truths. Loved the bullshit. Loved the beauty. But, as I collapse into a hotel room that is finally, blissfully quiet, I decide Trump was absolutely truthful about one thing. One day is enough, Baby.

I recently bought a discount copy of Reilly's later book, all about Trump and golf, Commander in Cheat. It looks to be pure TDS, but my mother has loved Reilly since I was a kid and hated Trump since he stiffed a friend of the family on work at one of his AC casinos, so I thought it would make a fine beach read for her. Still, it's sad to see how Reilly wrote about Trump in 2007, and how he talks about him now. How did we all end up here? Why is it that quirky sports journalism pays so badly, with Sports Illustrated either dead or a shadow of itself, so that a guy like Reilly who was a legend is stuck doing third rate punditry for cash? Why is it that a jovial guy like Trump, whose life has been nothing but blessed, is so angry all the time? Why is our entire politics built around Trump, a guy who is mostly just himself? What decisions did we all make that got us from there to here?

I tend to take Reilly's 2007 assessment more seriously as journalism: Trump is an excellent golfer, a fun guy, and an inveterate but generally harmless liar. Larger than life, blustering, cartoonish and buffoonish, more human than most anyone.

The whole book is on LibGen, where I just downloaded it to make looking things up easier than going back to my parents' house and finding my childhood copy, I highly recommend it for a light summer read.

NullHypothesis FiveHourMarathon 9mo ago

I always love reading your longer posts, you always seem to provide a fresh perspective on things for me.

I never really understood the appeal of golf. Does Trump love the game for what is truly is, or does he love it because it's a rich person sport you can brag about with other rich people that play that sport? Based on his skills and anecdotes, it sounds like he actually is passionate about the sport.

See, at that point in his life, he didn't get the free cheeseburgers.

Gave me a chuckle, I think I might take on your recommendation and read Reilly's book just for making me laugh.

Maybe I'm just not awake yet but what did Reilly get wrong exactly? Trump is still married to Melania and she continues to serve as the woman by his side on public appearances. I guess the claim that Trump is 100% faithful to Melania is technically untrue since everyone now knows about the Stormy Daniels story but isn't Melania his 3rd marriage? Did Trump actually have a reputation for being a 100% faithful guy back in 2007?

Why is it that a jovial guy like Trump, whose life has been nothing but blessed, is so angry all the time?

I imagine years of your character being attacked would be enough to break anyone. There may not be a single person on earth who's had more negative coverage about them than Trump in the entire world. I'm certain before he got involved into politics most interactions Trump had with the media was positive

What decisions did we all make that got us from there to here?

I ponder that too from time to time. I don't think the current world of politics and discourse would have been even considered a possibility to myself from 10 to 15 years ago. What a time we live in.

johnfabian NullHypothesis 9mo ago

Golf is an endless difficult and rewarding sport. It's a game that just throws endless euphoria and disappointment at you. I love it desperately (I just came back from a holiday where I played golf every day, sometimes multiple times, for two weeks) and I understand why some might not. But Trump loving golf makes a lot of sense to me.

NullHypothesis johnfabian 9mo ago

I recently read Nikaidou Hell Golf , which a manga series about a man trying to go pro but failing over and over again. Unlike a lot of manga, which is aimed at a younger audience and usually carries a theme of success and triumph, Nikaidou Hell Golf is a seinen manga (target audience being young adult men and older) and it is a story of failure. I think it did touch on golf being a "endless difficult and rewarding sport", the protagonist, Nikaidou Susumu, is a loser with mediocre skills that relies on the sponsorship of others to be able to attempt to become pro.

However, he never gives up (at least up to the most recent chapter) despite watching countless peers of his give up on their dreams to become an adult and take a job that pays the bills, despite being ostracized by those who once saw him as their hope of creating a successful pro golfer and by his much younger peers in the same program, and despite losing his sponsorship and having to come up with his own way of getting money to try to go pro (including taking money from his own retired mother that saved money for a vacation).

You essentially have a man with no future, who continued to take advantage of the goodwill of others in pursuit of his selfish dreams, and is unable to face reality that he should just give up on his dreams and move on with his life. Yet, if you read the story, it becomes clear the man is very aware of his own flaws, he knows he's taking advantage of those around him and feels immense guilt. In a sense, he is an addict, an addict to the game of golf, and to the idea that if he just goes pro he can fix all his mistakes and earn the adoration and respect of those around him.

The story is still ongoing, so it's not 100% clear exactly what the message the author intends to convey with the story. But it does touch a lot on the themes of adulthood, failure, dreams versus reality, and of course, euphoria and disappointment, all centered around one man's relationship with golf.

When golf presents itself in a story like this, I don't mind having to read about it. However, rather than enjoying golf in and of itself, I'm finding entertainment in the stories golf might create. I usually don't find any entertainment in watching an actual game of golf or looking at stats through golf (it also doesn't help that I actually don't play the sport, so those stats mean very little to me). It might just be because I don't create my own stories around these events, while those that do enjoy golf are able to immerse themselves in some kind of greater narrative beyond the game of golf. In a similar vein, I find baseball to be utterly boring, despite finding Michael Lewis' Moneyball to be a fascinating read.

Part of the reason I might not be able to formulate my own stories could be I'm just not in a bubble where anyone actually cares about golf. I work in a more technical role in a tech-focused company, where I rarely interact with executive level people (but I don't think even they really play golf). So none of the coworkers I interact with daily play golf, nobody in my family plays golf, the only time I really knew anyone that played golf was in college because some of my peers worked and played golf at the nearby country clubhouse. But those guys were in a different social group, with a different background. They were from rich, upper class families, while I attended the school on scholarship (and I chose the school precisely because it would cost me the least amount of money to graduate from). I didn't play the networking game well and that's my one regret in college, but honestly, even now I'm not sure, I could've done a good job at it. I don't think I would ever really be close friends with most of them. Perhaps if I did, I might have come to appreciate golf more for what it is.

But alas, golf to me just isn't something I can find myself to really be excited about. At best, it can serve as a medium for storytelling, and I can appreciate it through that, but as a sport in and of itself I can't find myself enjoying. For a guy like Trump, who probably grew up playing golf, who is surrounded by many others who engage in the sport, and who has many stories and experiences with surrounding it, I'm sure golf resonates with him on a deeper level. He's a big man with big stories, after all.

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