In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Yesterday I talked about Trump's authenticity, but I thinbk authenticity goes both ways. What aboslutely nbody has mentioned about Kamala is her forced upper-class style, fully visible in her Vogue cover last month. I did some web searching on "upoper class style" and got answers like this : The biggest thing I learned about these kinds of women is that they signal their wealth to others in their social class through hair, skin, and nail care even more than clothing. Upper-class women go for natural and subtle. They want you to think their hair and skin are just naturally gorgeous. So no loud or unnatural colored hair, and a great, simple, flattering cut. If you color your hair, find a skilled stylist who can make it look super natural with highlights and lowlights, and be willing to pay for their skills. Rich women will notice a poor dye job immediately and will perceive you as cheap. I am dead serious. Fake nails are a big no-no, it's judged as trashy. I m...

I don't think we've seen a presidential politician with a visual instinct like Trump's since either Roosevelt, and that includes Reagan. The harumphs from the corporate media have been non-stop, George Takei, Star Trek has-been, said, “In fairness, it’s not really a Trump garbage truck until it’s on fire.” Rolling Stone's headline was, "Bizarre: Billionaire Trump Awkwardly Dresses Up as a Garbage Truck Driver". Newsweek says, "Video of Donald Trump 'Struggling' to Enter Garbage Truck Goes Viral". CNN said, Donald Trump broke out the props Wednesday in the final days of this chaotic campaign as the former president seized on a garbled remark by President Joe Biden that seemed to insult Trump voters as “garbage.” Trump emerged from his plane ahead of a rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, wearing a bright orange and yellow safety vest before climbing into a garbage truck – with a big “TRUMP” sign emblazoned on the side – to take questions f...

Politico has a piece from yesterday that I can only call wishful thinking: Kamala Harris is counting on suburban voters to do what they’ve done since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016: reject him. It may be the single most important piece of her electoral math. While Donald Trump has made inroads with Black and Latino men, polls in the late stage of the election show the suburbs could still power her to victory. The latest Wall Street Journal poll found Harris leading among suburban voters by 7 percentage points, while a Reuters/Ipsos analysis showed the vice president winning suburban households by 6 points. . . . Inside the Harris campaign, aides said they believe they will improve on President Joe Biden’s performance with suburban voters in 2020, driven by college-educated voters and women who are turned off by the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Another piece there from yesterday claims this is in fact paying off: ...

Attribute whatever motive you want to Jeff Bezos, for instance : ex washington post editor: “Trump waited to make sure that Bezos did what he said he was going to do, and then met with the Blue Origin people,” he said on Saturday. “Which tells us that there was an actual deal made." The implication is that Bezos offered to squash a potential Washington Post endorsement of Harris in return for giving Bezos's Blue Origin favorable treatment for contracts in an upcoming Trump administration. Let's accept this -- Bezos has never had Rockefeller-level PR -- but then, let's also grant him the cupidinous instincts this implies. Why would Bezos see the point in making this deal? If the election were flip-a-coin close, which among other things might imply that a WaPo endorsement could tip it to Kamala, why change course? I think a reasonable conclusion is that insiders seem to think it's not close at all. Here's the headline at CEO Today: Trump’s VIP Tech List: ...

A recent feature of the Harris campaign has been the disappointing appeaarances of celebrities Lizzo (in Detroit October 19) and Beyonce (in Houston October 25) to endorse Kamala. Lizzo spoke, at least according to YouTube clips, for about seven minutes, notably claiming that if Kamala wins, the whole country will be like Detroit, but didn't perform. This also happened with Beyonce at the Houston rally : Beyoncé fans were left furious after the singer failed to perform at a Texas rally for Kamala Harris. The star took to the stage in her native Houston to endorse the Vice President on Friday night. Some fans had waited more than 12 hours before packing into the city's Shell Energy Stadium expecting a performance, after rumors she would sing swirled online and the Washington Post reported on her expected appearance. The singer appeared to come tantalizingly close to delighting the crowds when she began to talk about how it is time for America to 'sing a new song...

Let's continue down the road I started yesterday, a contrarian-revisionist reinterpretation of "Fabian socialism", which has been the consensus social democrat strategy in the West since the late 19th century. It is effectively a delaying strategy to appear to make concessions to the threat of class revolution, but the concessions, although expensive, are token, while they're made and financed by the middle class and upper proletariat (Paul Fussell's "high proles"), and the institutions of upper-class privilege remain untouched. One feature of the Trump era is that key demographic groups are beginning to recognize that this strategy in fact doesn't work for them, even though it had been sold as to their benefit. For instance, Barbara Clark is the perfect example of a voter—whether black, white, Hispanic, or from any other ethnic group—who defies stereotypes. This defiance often leads to voters such as her being overlooked as people who coul...

In Ferdinand Lundberg, The Rich and the Super-Rich (1969): Those few newspapers that make a practice of printing foreign news occasionally survey Latin American countries. The writers are invariably grieved to find a small oligarchy of big landowners in control, with the remainder of the population consisting of sycophantic hangers-on and landless, poverty-stricken peasants. But I have never seen it remarked that the basic description, with the alteration of a few nouns, applies just as well to the United States, where the position of the landowners is occupied by the financiers, industrialists and big rentiers and that of the peasants by the low-paid employees (all subject to dismissal for one reason or other just like the peasants). If anyone in the past few days seeks vindication of Ferdinand Lundberg's views, he need look no farther than the events surrounding the decisions by the once-totemic Los Angeles Times and Washington Post not to endorse a presidentiual ...