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Fathead Donald Trump banned in Wellesley
By adamg on Sat, 04/16/2016 - 8:26am
The Swellesley Report gets the scoop on how three kids wearing giant masks they got from a company called Fathead were ordered to stop wearing them at a school talent show after a resident complained. The Globe reports the parent found the dance offensive to Republicans.
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Comments
Republican hate free speech
unless it comes via paid placement on Fox, Drudge or talk radio.
Cough..safe spaces...cough cough
.
Trump banned in Wellesley?
What a bunch of hypocrites! I'm no fan of Donald Trump, but I don't think that banning him, or others of that ilk, is really the answer. What they should've done in Wellesley is to let Trump make his speeches, no matter how disgusting they really are, and then rebut what he says. That, imho, would've done more to repudiate Trump than banning him from the town of Wellesley altogether.
You've got it wrong
They banned fat head trump not small hand trump
Trump may be small-handed, but
he's a fat-head, at the same time.
Believe me
I understand the confusion
Apparently both sides hate free speech
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/03/24/emory-university-studen...
Heh: Republican hate free speech
unless it comes via paid placement on Fox, Drudge or talk radio.
I have to laugh...Trump has spent not a lot of money to get where he is. The media is giving him a free ride. The best laid plans and all...
So tell me, who made the complaint? Not a more conservative Republican, they don't want him. Not a Trump supporter, it's funny and draws attention and media. Maybe a demmie/leftie that wants to stir the pot? Beware what you ask for.
Pot has been stirred. This will go viral and it will be fun to watch. Unfortunately, unless they self-identify, the cheap-ass fun attempted killer will go unrevealed. Too bad, you should be revealed, because you suck. I liked it and a lot of others did, too.
On another (but not too different because I'm calling shenanigans here) note, AG, you're a leather killing reporter. (Shoe leather, for those too webbed up). You walk the walk, go to the meetings, report back with actual real reporting. Real journalism, in the traditional sense of the word.
So, any news on the South Boston St. Paddie's Day racist/arson, LGBT hate crime arson? Any word from BPD/BFD/DOJ/FBI/MSP?
The main stream media has been really quiet on that one.
Occam's Razor says the complainer is a Trump supporter.
I don't buy the logic of "Not a Trump supporter, it's funny and draws attention and media." Trump supporters, in my anecdotal experience, are not the kind of deep thinkers who ponder social-media strategies at grade-school talent shows.
Some low-wattage-bulb Trumpie, probably hyper-sensitive about his lack of education amidst the famously over-educated Wellesley citizenry, was quick to take offense at the perceived slight of his hero, and squawked at the first school official he could buttonhole. Kids' innocuous fun officially party-pooped: thanks, asshole.
I expect most normal people of at least average intelligence would look at the routine and say, "Aw, that's adorable", never thinking one way or another about how to exploit it politically, because it's three 11-year-olds doing a silly dance sketch. To read nefarious intent into it, you've got to be some kind of red-faced, angry, frustrated, paranoid, dimwitted d-bag. That's the wheelhouse demographic of Trump supporters.
Nope.
OK, here's some non-anecdotal evidence for you. It's from the LA Times, so no right wing nutjob bias...
http://graphics.latimes.com/election-2016-massachusetts-results/
Wellesley, Kasich 1330 to Trump's 987, so more chance, numerically, that it's a Kasich supporter, or maybe, just maybe, a leftie/progressive provocateur.
"To read nefarious intent into it, you've got to be some kind of red-faced, angry, frustrated, paranoid, dimwitted d-bag. That's the wheelhouse demographic of Trump supporters."
You mean like the Newton, Medfield or Beverly (home of Manchester-by-the-Sea) demographic? Oh, Belmont and pretty much all of the state.
Making derogatory remarks about your fellow citizens is not nice. I will agree that the school should have told the complainer to sod off, but then that's the state of education these days.
Any results on the Southie arson? If I recall, a lot was said here about the lowbrow racists that live there.
I'll stand by those disparaging remarks about Trump
supporters. What does it matter what town they live in? I think there's something profoundly broken in your critical thinking skills if you think that man is remotely qualified to be the leader of the free world.
Trump in the embodiment of 40 years of GOP strategy to win the votes of poor and middle-class voters by inflaming their bigotries (racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance) and using anti-government rhetoric to destroy the regulatory protections that defend ordinary citizens against the abuses of corporate interests and the super-wealthy.
The establishment GOP likes to use veiled, dog-whistle language to achieve their ends; Trump simply tears off the veil. The horror of the country-club wing of the party is that Trump's negatives are so high that not only might he lose, but in the process clobber the hopes of national and local GOP candidates down the ticket. They created this Frankenstein's monster, and it has busted out of the lab.
I'd find the whole thing hilarious for the irony if I weren't terrified of the prospect that Trump might win anyway.
"I think there's something
"I think there's something profoundly broken in your critical thinking skills if you think that man is remotely qualified to be the leader of the free world. "
I think there's something profoundly broken in your reading comprehension skills if you can find anything in what I wrote that indicates that I think he'll be a good or competent leader of this country.
"What does it matter what town they live in?"
I see. No, actually I don't. I guess from your description of Trump supporters, they must be from the poor, uneducated sections of Newton or Beverly. What I think you're implying is that you're a classist that hates and looks down on people without much money.
"Trump in the embodiment of 40 years of GOP strategy to win the votes of poor and middle-class voters by inflaming their bigotries (racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, religious intolerance) and using anti-government rhetoric to destroy the regulatory protections that defend ordinary citizens against the abuses of corporate interests and the super-wealthy."
You mean Eisenhower's defense of integrated education in Little Rock against the likes of southern Democrats? You mean that you don't know that Bull Connor was a member of the Democratic National Committee? You mean Nixon's hiring of a democrat to be his Sec of the Treasury? You mean Nixon's ideas for national health insurance?
History...this country is doomed if we don't study it.
Bernie Sanders, socialist. Stalin, socialist. Mao, Pol Pot, Castro. The dead guy in Venezuela.
Bottom line, and I think you will agree with me here, is that in a country of 300 million, we have some of the most egregious grifters, jerks and obsolete candidates running for president that I have ever seen.
I've been called some odd things, but classist?
I'm talking about a resident of Wellesley, where the average household income is $160K. While it is true that Trump does far better with the poorly educated, he's clearly got some fans among the (presumably better-educated) wealthy; I've met more than one. Economic populism is not his only message: the spittle-flecked hatred is obviously a big draw, too. And some people just admire blustering bullies, I guess.
Speaking of studying history, 40 years doesn't take us back to Eisenhower or Nixon, even if the Southern Strategy is clearly a part of what I'm talking about. Nixon may have crafted it, but it's been the centerpiece of the GOP playbook since. Bringing up long-ago Democratic complicity in institutionalized racism is a very tired, transparent bit of deceit; they and the Republicans traded sides on the issue during the civil rights era. The anti-government rhetoric started to get rabid with Reagan.
Whatever, DMC. I can't get worked up over some stranger on the Internet missing my point, muddling the facts, and jumping to bizarre conclusions. You read into my comments whatever you like. You are at least correct in that we agree on the general awfulness of the presidential field this cycle. My vote will turn on who I think will do a better job with Supreme Court appointees, which I suspect will have greater impact than anything else the next president or two accomplishes.
But I thought Trump
But I thought Trump supporters liked it when someone "tells is like it is." I guess that only applies when it's about minorities, foreigners, women, gays, or anyone else not part of the Trump camp.
Three kids doing a TD Garden Dance Cam routine while
wearing Trump masks is "offensive to Republicans"?
The kids clearly are not making a political statement; they just picked an of-the-moment celebrity. The masks might as well have been of Justin Bieber or Kim Kardashian.
It's revealing to see that Trump's supporters are as self-involved, tone-deaf and thin-skinned as he is. I suppose it's fortunate that this alleged adult responded simply by whining to the principal rather than sucker-punching or pepper-spraying the kids.
What's offensive?
It was three kids dancing to instrumental music while holding a poster board picture in their teeth. Free speech aside, why is this any more or less offensive than the kids doing the same dance without the Trump heads?
If the kids took a shit on the stage that would be offensive. Dancing? No so much.
ehh
trump frequently shits on stage and people love it
HAHAHA POLITICAL JOKES OH MAN WHAT A KNEE SLAPPER
oh, for god's sake
Here are some things you could actually bring up, if you wanted to insult Trump and/or the Republican party:
- Trump has repeatedly declared bankruptcy to avoid paying his debts
- Trump is a genuine creep where his daughter(s) are concerned
- Trump literally doesn't know what he's talking about, at all, ever
- The Republican party has created the Frankenstein's monster that is Trump and "Trumpism"
- Rance Pubis or whatever his name is sucks
- The whole party has, since Nixon, built itself on being as obstructionist and racist and shitty as possible
- Let them burn
These kids, on the other hand, are pretty cute.
I agree with all of what you said, except your very last sentenc
I agree with everything that you've said, except your very last sentence, about these kids in Wellesley "being pretty cute."
These kids are a bunch of spoiled little hypocrites, who can't stand it when somebody they dislike comes to their town, so they ban him or her.
These "pretty cute" kids don't realize that banning Trump will do less to repudiate him than would allowing him to make his appearance and his speeches, and rebutting what he has to say. If enough people do get the opportunity to rebut Trump, thus really exposing him for the kind of person he really and truly is, that may very well derail his whole campaign!
I don't know what story you're reading, but it
clearly isn't this one. Where did you get the idea that anyone was trying to "ban Trump"?
Three 11-year-olds did a dance routine wearing Trump masks at an elementary school talent show. Some right-wing fuckwit got his knickers in a knot because his fevered imagination read it as an anti-GOP political statement, so the kids were told they couldn't do their bit anymore.
I agree with your general sentiment that the better one gets to know Trump, the more frightening / ridiculous / appalling the idea of him as president becomes. But leave the harmless grade-school kids out of it.
Well.
Maybe the parents of these kids are the ones who want to ban Trump from Wellesley, but have decided to let their kids deliver the message for them.
Ah, my apologies
for taking you seriously at first. I just thought you were obtuse, didn't realize you are a garden-variety troll.
Soon to be appearing....
...on every late-night comedy show next week. I wouldn't be surprised if Comedy Central hasn't already booked them to perform on the Daily Show or the Nightly Show. School vacation week, right?
Not to mention the clip will be on every political talk show on Sunday, too.
What's actually offensive about this story
It's not the kids.
1) That someone was ginned up enough by their routine to complain to the school about it instead of sucking it up.
2) That the school upon receiving the complaint didn't tell the person that their concerns are noted, but that the students will be allowed to do their routine because there's nothing against the school policies about it.
3) That the media is just "reporting" that this happened and not asking one simple question of the school: "So why did the complaint merit the response you gave it?".
If you want a prime example of how our mass media has rolled over on free speech, this is it. Sure it's just kids doing a stupid dance and one whiny adult and one overworked school administrator making a judgement call, but it's also art being stifled by the government to satisfy political dissent. Why didn't anyone question that this happened instead of leaving it for the rest of us to get bent out of shape over how stupid it is that it happened ex post facto? Oh, right...better to have our ratings/views than to actually challenge the system.
Additionally, if this was 3 dancing Bernies or Hillaries, do you think anyone would have complained? Of course not.
Ah but you see
to ask a pointed question is difficult when one has a dull mind.
I would blame "society" in the abstract sense, but because it's a fine Saturday morning, I'm going to specifically blame whoever taught these knuckleheads journalism for giving them a passing grade instead of boxing them on the ears (metaphorically, or maybe even literally) when they inevitably tried to pull this kind of nonsense in journalism school.
Don't be so sure
Actually, three dancing Bernies would have been equated with "desire to kill bankers and have revolutions" and complaints about "implied threats" would have followed from that, too.
The real problem: why are the same sort of people who whine about young people not voting (or who used to) prohibiting electoral discourse in high schools as "inappropriate"?
I'm okay with it, but someone
Personally I'm okay with it, but someone else might find it offensive.
I believe that this the train of thought that leads to political correctness run amok.
If it were 3 Obamas though......?
I bet there would have been a problem, and that the person who complained probably mentioned that.
I'm just taking a guess, that if kids wore Obama fat heads, it would have appeared to have been some sort of blackface skit, and so the school reacted (maybe overreacted) and just said no political fatheads allowed in such a racially charged election.
You might be right about that, and given the
long history of white performers doing blackface minstrel shows in less enlightened times, explaining to the kids why such an act is offensive in 2016 would be the right thing to do: that even though they meant no harm by it, white people dancing while costumed as black people is freighted with the racist history of minstrelsy in America.
Now, if there were a similar history of white people performing in orangeface and basing their act on offensive racial stereotypes about Orange-Americans, then quashing the Trump Fathead act on those grounds would be a similarly proper exercise in educating kids on why it's best to avoid repeating the embarrassing bigotries of our forefathers.
I'm afraid the analogy falls on its face when you try to apply it to a white guy.
Orange
Is the new black
I was triggered by reading
I was triggered by reading this article, and that's enough reason for me, mister.
Very sensitive choice
The school was very considerate in making the talent show safe for republican parents.
It is important to take a stand sometimes and make sure such insensitive frivolities go no farther.
I'm sure the parent who complained feels much better now.
Sucks when the sensitvity police
don't stay loyal to The Cause, don't it?
Okay
It is "sensitivity police" here, but when it comes to laws about gender checking of bathroom users or some dimwit rube decides not to issue marriage licenses to gay people or make a goddamn cake, or public school teachers punish atheist kids, suddenly that is "religious freedom".
Got it.
All about the dog-whistles, never about reality. A tragedy when one group squelches rights, a "right to mah freedumb" when another group does it.
it would be funny if it were republicans that were upset
given that donald trump himself probably would have laughed his butt off at this
Mixed up municipalities
The folks on this thread who are implying (or explicitly asserting) that Wellesley is full of left wing nuts trying to ban Trump or any other Republican might be, perhaps, confusing the town with the municipalities immediately to its east.
I don't think that there are a lot of Trump supporters in Wellesley, but there sure as hell aren't a whole lot of extreme lefties, either.
Yes, either they can't read or they're trolling for the lulz.
The only ban mentioned anywhere in this story is the ban on the kids' act that was prompted by some pathetic old fart that interpreted it as "anti-Republican".
In order to detect any whiff of anti-Trump sentiment anywhere, you'd have to take the same dopey leap of imagination that the presumed Old Man Yelling at Cloud did: that these elementary school kids were taking a swipe at Trump. It's just what fifth grade boys are about these days: advancing the cause of moonbat liberalism -- through dance! So crafty!
Won't someone please, please stand up for the poor oppressed class of leafy-exurb-dwelling conservative white men, the ones who watch this video and conclude, "Kids these days, using their synchronized dance routines to mount a scathing indictment of everything Trump stands for! HOW DARE THEY?!"
Out of the mouths of babes
These boys are wise to our own follies in politics without realizing it. I wonder if the one complainer is someone with the power to intimidate the school administrator (i.e., threaten his continued employment)? If that is the case then the boys are now a bit wise to the follies of so-called leaders who cower when a bully threatens.
Clearly not political speech
Clearly not political speech but what does it say about the way how he campaigns that the mere site of the mask makes a room full of middle school students break out into laughter? I imagine dancing with a Bernie, Cruz, Hillary or Kasich* mask would also be funny to a degree but I doubt it would have had the same immediate reaction. It reminds me of the controversy around the opening episode of fuller house where Trump is mentioned twice and both times for a quick laugh with no real subtance. At this point you don't even need a punch line, you just have to say "Donald Trump" and jet your hands out and people break into laughter. Go ahead try it... I bet it works.
* In the case of Kasich the kids might not even have a clue who was dancing