I believe a major reason the awful slurs from Trump’s Madison Square Garden MAGA rally are resonating so deeply with people - besides the genuine outrage at the overt racism - is because the behavior encapsulates everything we abhor about the last nine years.
Shaun Micallef on America's unseemly pursuit of Happiness
Opinion / North America
America’s unseemly pursuit of Happiness
Not much separates Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump, both driven by the wild-eyed pursuit of an elusive dream they believe promised to them.
Shaun MicallefNov 01, 2024
24
Share
Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump and... Shaun Micallef (Image: Zennie/Private Media/Ben King/ABC)
Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump and... Shaun Micallef (Image: Zennie/Private Media/Ben King/ABC)
If Donald J. Trump, by some lapse in cosmic reason, should triumph on November 5, will he do as he has promised and Make America Great Again? And which America? The one he aimed to Make Great Again back in 2016, or the one he restored to greatness during his four years in office up until 2020 and which the Democrats have since wrecked?
Or is it both or neither? Or, more confusingly, both and neither?
America is a funny old place. If famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady were still alive and had a femto-camera instead of one of those daguerreotype deals on sticks, and could capture every single moment of America’s storied history at once to make a giant flicker book that we could all watch in a single second, the retinal burn left on our brain would be that of a jewel-toothed hillbilly in a billowing night-shirt standing over a New York subway air vent, liberty torch aloft in one hand and recently fired telescopic rifle in the other.
Donald Trump (Image: Private Media)
No, a Trump presidency isn’t business as usual for Australia — he threatens our economy, security and political stability
Read More
Most of us know of America only through the widescreen VistaVision window of Hollywood, that mythical place set among the back-suburb orange groves of southern California, created by immigrant belt-buckle salesmen in the early 1900s to peddle the fiction of assimilation: that anyone can make it in America regardless of race and creed, no matter how poor or hungry or wretched or huddled you are.
America’s greatest invention is not the lightbulb or the telegraph or the Post-it note, but fame. The American Dream is the fantasy of everyone watching you, of knowing who you are, of envying you, of wanting to be you. All while your gnawing self-doubt, held at precarious bay under a mountain of benzos, threatens to escape at any moment and give the game away.
It’s Narcissus and Caliban fusing themselves in a telepod accident gone wrong and then dancing the night away at Studio 54. It’s Horatio Alger in Ron Kovic’s wheelchair. It’s a face-tattooed Cinderella walking an overly botoxed ugly duckling on a leash along Hollywood Boulevard. It’s OJ Simpson’s zombie and a choir of radioactive school-shooting victims waving at the paparazzi and then slipping into Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to watch the premiere of a film starring them all.
Logo, Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, the title in blood-red Helvetica: AMERICA.
Iris in, a grassy knoll, apes banging on a monolith, a shot rings out. Another president bound for Arlington. Cut to Congress shrugging. Audacious whip-pan to Jasper Johns’ painting of Old Glory flying half-mast atop the Capitol dome. Tilt down as the mob attacks. January 6th? No, ‘tis August 24, 1814, and the British are comin,’ the tang of musket ball in their nostrils from their recent blooding at Bladensburg. ‘To Brookeville!’ cries James Madison, grabbing the half-finished painting of George Washington.
‘Have you no decency, sir?” BANG! Smash cut: Lincoln grabs his chest, the crowd gasps, Babe Ruth knocks another hunk of cowhide over the border wall. A small Mexican boy catches it, races home through the streets of Tijuana and proudly shows it to his mother… ‘Este huevo de fiesta está delicioso, madre!’
That boy will grow up to be either Tito Fuentes or Tito Puente. Dissolve to the trundle of a Conestoga wagon making its way across the prairie. It turns Transformer-style into a spaceship. “Hail to the Chief” wells as Washington, Lincoln, Madison and Kennedy climb aboard and strap themselves in. Ben Grimm is at the controls. ‘It’s clobberin’ time,’ he announces.
Reed Richards and the Human Torch hand out peanuts and Invisible Woman does the safety demonstration. They rocket into the sky and disappear with a sonic boom, an infinity symbol left sparkling in the air in stardust. Roll end-titles.
Post-credit sequence: Virginia’s Mount Rogers at sunset. A newly born black child is held skywards by a silhouetted figure. The outstretched arms belong to Thomas Jefferson. He turns to the camera and winks.
Jefferson had a lot in common with Trump. The third president was a hedonist slave owner, a voluptuary who never paid his bills. The 45th, too, grabbed whatever he wanted, had lickspittles at his beck and call and stiffed contractors left and right. Jefferson was an indiscriminate racist and power-mad proponent of the proto-Nietzsche Superman; Trump was more calculating with his bigotry and even more focused in his delusions. Tom rained war down upon the Moslems of the Barbary Coast with one stroke of his quill but refused to sign the emancipating birth certificates of the bastards he was siring at Monticello with that same ink. The Don wanted to ban Muslims from entering the country and pressed his children and in-laws into service as vassals and handmaidens.
Both though were driven by the wild-eyed pursuit — as guaranteed by the US Constitution — of Happiness — Jefferson through a hemp field, across the family graveyard and up a tulip tree if necessary; Trump the only way he knows how.
Donald Trump (Image: Private Media)
Yes, a Trump presidency would be business as usual in Australia — the enshittification of political culture will continue unabated
Read More
The only real difference between the two is that the author of the Declaration of Independence thought nothing of travelling to Paris to deflower his dead wife’s underaged half-sister, whereas the closest the non-ghost writer of The Art of the Deal got to dishonouring anything from France was the faux-Beaux art furniture he chose for Mar-a-Lago.
And with Jefferson at the helm of the nascent nation and Trump jumping from one foot to the other in anticipation at the aft, it’s little wonder that America has become what it is: run amok with impecunious fools and dreamers, scrambling over each other in search of the next quick fix — a country of ill-dressed simpletons, deaf to reason, blind to truth, numb to the human condition, gratifying themselves in the shadows at the dead end of a garbage-strewn back alley called hope. Probably eating a cat.
Still, I don’t want to be thought of as partisan in all of this. Even if it’s Kamala Harris who kicks the field goal on Tuesday, I think the only way for America to be truly great again is for the British to reinvade and make America what it once was: 13 separate colonies that produce mainly tobacco, rice and indigo.
Has the American experiment failed? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
About the Author
Shaun Micallef — Contributor
Shaun Micallef
Contributor @shaunmicallef
Shaun Micallef is a TV writer, producer, performer and former host of the award-winning Mad as Hell on the ABC. He has a new book out called Slivers, Shards & Skerricks (Affirm Press).
Thank you for putting this all into words. Keep sharing and articulating these sentiments you feel because they resonate with me and my family. We agree. He is disgusting as a person and is totally unit, along with vapid JD Vance, to lead the Freeworld.
Thought you might enjoy a humorous Australian take on the US shitshow! It's from The Chaser.
View in browser
This newsletter is brought to you by Jeff Bezos, who we endorse for president (after we were purchased by the Washington Post)
Issue 300 (Double Feature) - 1st Nov 2024
Editorial statement: Goodbye America
With the American election just days awar, we felt that it was important for us to make a statement as the most trusted news outlet.
So our message to American voters is clear: goodbye!
We were hoping that you would make the obvious decision, but considering your education standards, it doesn't surprise us that you will ultimately end up failing this basic history lesson.
You do still have a chance to not completely fuck up your country, but decision making isn't really your strong suit. Just look at your gun policies, or how long James Corden got to host a tv show.
We understand and accept that America approaches politics like how the messy friend in the group chat approaches situationships.
But like with that friend, we can't sit by while you get back with your toxic ex who doesn't care about you or keep his hands to himself.
Clearly this where we must say goodbye. We want to abort our friendship with your country now, before the Republicans ban us from being able to do so.
We obviously are not including the Australian government in this though, they will continue to do whatever your president says, licking your boots cleaner than a Qantas chairman's lounge.
Don't be sad America, you've had a good... well not good... you've had a run. But now you are going to fuck it up.
We would like to ask if you can give us back the Hemsworths and Margot Robbie first though. But if it makes you feel better, you can keep Mel Gibson.
We think he fits your current vibe well.
Goodbye and good luck,
The Chaser Editorial
(We're like the Onion but less respected or popular)
I wish i had your confidence. Every day I am astounded that this race is even close. Are we a Nation of morons, bigots, Christo-Fascists and greedy bastards? Lordy, i hope not!
Two hundred million (possibly a lot more) hope that you are right. There are probably billions of people in the whole f - ing world that hope you are right. You have been right, honest, and unafraid for 9 years. We all owe a debt of gratitude to you Noel. Too bad more people in this country are too ignorant, blind, deaf, or scared to pay attention to what you've been saying all along. We want a landslide. Anything less will be shit show by shit heads and the biggest shit head of them all.
Thanks for this. I used to live 3 blocks from MSG and got physically ill about what came down in a place I used to pass daily. I appreciate who you have become in truth telling before and during this time in our nations history. You have helped me survive.
Noel, this was so well articulated. Thank you for once again making me feel better. I am finally experiencing more hope than despair. I think we're all going to be ok. Thanks for all you do, on all platforms.
Noel, I've followed you and listened to you since you first started speaking out on Twitter about that sick asshole. Thank you so much for all you do and say to take Trump down.
one more piece from an Australian satirist:
Shaun Micallef on America's unseemly pursuit of Happiness
Opinion / North America
America’s unseemly pursuit of Happiness
Not much separates Thomas Jefferson and Donald Trump, both driven by the wild-eyed pursuit of an elusive dream they believe promised to them.
Shaun MicallefNov 01, 2024
24
Share
Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump and... Shaun Micallef (Image: Zennie/Private Media/Ben King/ABC)
Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump and... Shaun Micallef (Image: Zennie/Private Media/Ben King/ABC)
If Donald J. Trump, by some lapse in cosmic reason, should triumph on November 5, will he do as he has promised and Make America Great Again? And which America? The one he aimed to Make Great Again back in 2016, or the one he restored to greatness during his four years in office up until 2020 and which the Democrats have since wrecked?
Or is it both or neither? Or, more confusingly, both and neither?
America is a funny old place. If famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady were still alive and had a femto-camera instead of one of those daguerreotype deals on sticks, and could capture every single moment of America’s storied history at once to make a giant flicker book that we could all watch in a single second, the retinal burn left on our brain would be that of a jewel-toothed hillbilly in a billowing night-shirt standing over a New York subway air vent, liberty torch aloft in one hand and recently fired telescopic rifle in the other.
Donald Trump (Image: Private Media)
No, a Trump presidency isn’t business as usual for Australia — he threatens our economy, security and political stability
Read More
Most of us know of America only through the widescreen VistaVision window of Hollywood, that mythical place set among the back-suburb orange groves of southern California, created by immigrant belt-buckle salesmen in the early 1900s to peddle the fiction of assimilation: that anyone can make it in America regardless of race and creed, no matter how poor or hungry or wretched or huddled you are.
America’s greatest invention is not the lightbulb or the telegraph or the Post-it note, but fame. The American Dream is the fantasy of everyone watching you, of knowing who you are, of envying you, of wanting to be you. All while your gnawing self-doubt, held at precarious bay under a mountain of benzos, threatens to escape at any moment and give the game away.
It’s Narcissus and Caliban fusing themselves in a telepod accident gone wrong and then dancing the night away at Studio 54. It’s Horatio Alger in Ron Kovic’s wheelchair. It’s a face-tattooed Cinderella walking an overly botoxed ugly duckling on a leash along Hollywood Boulevard. It’s OJ Simpson’s zombie and a choir of radioactive school-shooting victims waving at the paparazzi and then slipping into Sid Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to watch the premiere of a film starring them all.
Logo, Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”, the title in blood-red Helvetica: AMERICA.
Iris in, a grassy knoll, apes banging on a monolith, a shot rings out. Another president bound for Arlington. Cut to Congress shrugging. Audacious whip-pan to Jasper Johns’ painting of Old Glory flying half-mast atop the Capitol dome. Tilt down as the mob attacks. January 6th? No, ‘tis August 24, 1814, and the British are comin,’ the tang of musket ball in their nostrils from their recent blooding at Bladensburg. ‘To Brookeville!’ cries James Madison, grabbing the half-finished painting of George Washington.
‘Have you no decency, sir?” BANG! Smash cut: Lincoln grabs his chest, the crowd gasps, Babe Ruth knocks another hunk of cowhide over the border wall. A small Mexican boy catches it, races home through the streets of Tijuana and proudly shows it to his mother… ‘Este huevo de fiesta está delicioso, madre!’
That boy will grow up to be either Tito Fuentes or Tito Puente. Dissolve to the trundle of a Conestoga wagon making its way across the prairie. It turns Transformer-style into a spaceship. “Hail to the Chief” wells as Washington, Lincoln, Madison and Kennedy climb aboard and strap themselves in. Ben Grimm is at the controls. ‘It’s clobberin’ time,’ he announces.
Reed Richards and the Human Torch hand out peanuts and Invisible Woman does the safety demonstration. They rocket into the sky and disappear with a sonic boom, an infinity symbol left sparkling in the air in stardust. Roll end-titles.
Post-credit sequence: Virginia’s Mount Rogers at sunset. A newly born black child is held skywards by a silhouetted figure. The outstretched arms belong to Thomas Jefferson. He turns to the camera and winks.
Jefferson had a lot in common with Trump. The third president was a hedonist slave owner, a voluptuary who never paid his bills. The 45th, too, grabbed whatever he wanted, had lickspittles at his beck and call and stiffed contractors left and right. Jefferson was an indiscriminate racist and power-mad proponent of the proto-Nietzsche Superman; Trump was more calculating with his bigotry and even more focused in his delusions. Tom rained war down upon the Moslems of the Barbary Coast with one stroke of his quill but refused to sign the emancipating birth certificates of the bastards he was siring at Monticello with that same ink. The Don wanted to ban Muslims from entering the country and pressed his children and in-laws into service as vassals and handmaidens.
Both though were driven by the wild-eyed pursuit — as guaranteed by the US Constitution — of Happiness — Jefferson through a hemp field, across the family graveyard and up a tulip tree if necessary; Trump the only way he knows how.
Donald Trump (Image: Private Media)
Yes, a Trump presidency would be business as usual in Australia — the enshittification of political culture will continue unabated
Read More
The only real difference between the two is that the author of the Declaration of Independence thought nothing of travelling to Paris to deflower his dead wife’s underaged half-sister, whereas the closest the non-ghost writer of The Art of the Deal got to dishonouring anything from France was the faux-Beaux art furniture he chose for Mar-a-Lago.
And with Jefferson at the helm of the nascent nation and Trump jumping from one foot to the other in anticipation at the aft, it’s little wonder that America has become what it is: run amok with impecunious fools and dreamers, scrambling over each other in search of the next quick fix — a country of ill-dressed simpletons, deaf to reason, blind to truth, numb to the human condition, gratifying themselves in the shadows at the dead end of a garbage-strewn back alley called hope. Probably eating a cat.
Still, I don’t want to be thought of as partisan in all of this. Even if it’s Kamala Harris who kicks the field goal on Tuesday, I think the only way for America to be truly great again is for the British to reinvade and make America what it once was: 13 separate colonies that produce mainly tobacco, rice and indigo.
Has the American experiment failed? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
About the Author
Shaun Micallef — Contributor
Shaun Micallef
Contributor @shaunmicallef
Shaun Micallef is a TV writer, producer, performer and former host of the award-winning Mad as Hell on the ABC. He has a new book out called Slivers, Shards & Skerricks (Affirm Press).
Topics
Thank you for putting this all into words. Keep sharing and articulating these sentiments you feel because they resonate with me and my family. We agree. He is disgusting as a person and is totally unit, along with vapid JD Vance, to lead the Freeworld.
Thought you might enjoy a humorous Australian take on the US shitshow! It's from The Chaser.
View in browser
This newsletter is brought to you by Jeff Bezos, who we endorse for president (after we were purchased by the Washington Post)
Issue 300 (Double Feature) - 1st Nov 2024
Editorial statement: Goodbye America
With the American election just days awar, we felt that it was important for us to make a statement as the most trusted news outlet.
So our message to American voters is clear: goodbye!
We were hoping that you would make the obvious decision, but considering your education standards, it doesn't surprise us that you will ultimately end up failing this basic history lesson.
You do still have a chance to not completely fuck up your country, but decision making isn't really your strong suit. Just look at your gun policies, or how long James Corden got to host a tv show.
We understand and accept that America approaches politics like how the messy friend in the group chat approaches situationships.
But like with that friend, we can't sit by while you get back with your toxic ex who doesn't care about you or keep his hands to himself.
Clearly this where we must say goodbye. We want to abort our friendship with your country now, before the Republicans ban us from being able to do so.
We obviously are not including the Australian government in this though, they will continue to do whatever your president says, licking your boots cleaner than a Qantas chairman's lounge.
Don't be sad America, you've had a good... well not good... you've had a run. But now you are going to fuck it up.
We would like to ask if you can give us back the Hemsworths and Margot Robbie first though. But if it makes you feel better, you can keep Mel Gibson.
We think he fits your current vibe well.
Goodbye and good luck,
The Chaser Editorial
(We're like the Onion but less respected or popular)
Issue 300 - 300 issues too many
Hopefully the MSG event is the fatal toxic frosting to the wretched poisonous cake. Thank you, Noel Casler!
Thank you…
🙏🙏🙏💙💙💙💖💙☘️😘
I wish i had your confidence. Every day I am astounded that this race is even close. Are we a Nation of morons, bigots, Christo-Fascists and greedy bastards? Lordy, i hope not!
Certainly appears that way! Is there any other explanation?
Two hundred million (possibly a lot more) hope that you are right. There are probably billions of people in the whole f - ing world that hope you are right. You have been right, honest, and unafraid for 9 years. We all owe a debt of gratitude to you Noel. Too bad more people in this country are too ignorant, blind, deaf, or scared to pay attention to what you've been saying all along. We want a landslide. Anything less will be shit show by shit heads and the biggest shit head of them all.
"I always felt a comedian would help take down Trump"
It SHOULD have been Zelensky!
I wonder how many early voters are kicking themselves right now. Guten Tag.
Thanks for this. I used to live 3 blocks from MSG and got physically ill about what came down in a place I used to pass daily. I appreciate who you have become in truth telling before and during this time in our nations history. You have helped me survive.
Noel rocks! Thank you! I can’t wait for him to be imprisoned and rot til he is dead.
Noel, this was so well articulated. Thank you for once again making me feel better. I am finally experiencing more hope than despair. I think we're all going to be ok. Thanks for all you do, on all platforms.
Noel, I've followed you and listened to you since you first started speaking out on Twitter about that sick asshole. Thank you so much for all you do and say to take Trump down.