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Trump Part 17

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Two points. While I agree with vuk’s broad thrust that celebrity also performs as a social currency to enable access to elite social circles (Greta fist-bumping with Obama, etc) I would argue it is transitory without sufficient money. 1. Ellen has been introduced to the family before via the fact his wife and daughter Barbara and Jenna have both come down hard on the side of same sex marriage and LGBT rights. 2. Ellen is also fabulously financially wealthy — to the tune of $330 Million according to searches and she was already wealthy when she first met Barbara.

Even in this climate of killing trans people (and getting away with it, thanks to the “trans panic” plea) and current proposed rollbacks of protections for firing gay and trans people denying LGBT people jobs and workers rights for any reason whatsoever, despite hosting shows highlighting “our” plight, she is one of “them” and will always be one of them, not because because of her celebrity status but because she reeks of money — she is perma-elite, she is “their” token all-white LGBTQ ally. The liberal face of moneyed success.

Her justification/standup skit she did following this taking the opportunity to briefly brag about her iPhone 11 (as if $2000 of consumer electronics was some kind of diversion that she was sitting next to a real-life war criminal) was to try and normalise it all by saying “gee, we just need to get on with ppl with different opinions”. Not war criminals Ellen, Not people who presided over a right-wing fundamentalist-led murder-adgenda. No. Ellen. Your money has protected you and made you blind to a ever-desperate and fractious class war happening around you.

...“but would you say the same about Michelle Obama looking all cute with GWB with jelly beans and all?” Where the answer is of course “yes”. Firstly she is both wealthy and a celebrity which overrides her race in a classist and racist America. Money projects ppl out of the gravity-well of the class war. If you are rich enough, more cash projects you out of the gravity-well of race as well. Infamy/Celebrity can get you into a low earth orbit but eventually and without celebrity and insufficiently leveraging that celebrity for money it will suck you back — but you will forever remain compromised when you fall back to Earth. Celebrity alone is not enough to permanently achieve elite status. But it is a hell of a leg up.
 
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At the rate he's going, Trump will no only be hauled before the House and Senate, now he's bucking for a tribunal at The Hague. There is surely some kind of wink wink nudge nudge understanding between Trump and Erdogan re: the Kurds. "They didn't help us with the Second World War. They didn't help us with Normandy." He may have washed his hands of the Kurds, but his hands certainly aren't clean.
 
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