Feel Good Ink

My parents asked me if I had bought the new book Fire and Fury. I had not, nor had they. It seems that we had each independently come to the same conclusion: it's a waste of money to buy the book, as you can just watch the news for a few days and they will read out the best parts to you.

Of course, you don't even need to do that much; the book can be summed up easily: Trump is an idiot. And you had probably already come to that conclusion. So I'm not sure why people are buying the book; you'll be reading anecdotes you've already heard, telling you something you already know. And apparently, it's now been leaked onto Wikileaks. I guess that site is trying to hurt the book sales as revenge for attacking their guy. And they're doing it by spreading a book that makes their guy look bad. Remember when the world sorta made sense?

An interesting aspect of the news around the book is a joke from cartoonist Ben Ward, who tweets as @pixelatedboat. He decided to spoof the bizarre anecdotes leaking out of the book by creating his own totally-exaggerated fake anecdote that was supposedly from the book. In his excerpt, it was alleged that Trump was very displeased that the TV in the White House does not have "The Gorilla Channel." This despite there never having been a gorilla channel. To placate him, aides created a fake Gorilla Channel by editing together Gorilla documentaries and feeding them on a loop to Trump's TV.

Of course, as many people are finding these days, it's pretty much impossible to ridicule through exaggeration. After all, making a fake cable channel is only a little beyond what we've heard White House employees do to placate their boss. I noticed that in one online discussion people were trying to assure themselves that the passage was fake, and the final convincing argument was not the content, but the fact that the author had put periods outside the quotes, which goes against standard editing practices.

What I found interesting is that Netflix tweeted a plea to stop asking them for the Gorilla Channel. By the same principle mentioned above, I have no idea if they are joking. But imagine if they aren't: here we all are making fun of Trump for wanting this channel that is quite silly and doesn't even exist. And yet, it turns out that given the chance, lots of people want the same thing.

And that's something that worries me in all this. Much as I don't like Trump, I worry that when we ridicule him, we let the rest of society off the hook. After all, the troubling aspect of his story is not the fact that he exists, but the fact that he has been allowed to take this much power. And to address that problem, we have to concern ourselves with the competence of our whole society, not just Trump. Reading about his exploits of stupidity makes us feel superior, but it allows us to avoid the need we all have to look at our inner Trump.