From Idiocracy, 20th Century Fox
http://www.cnn.com/...
During Thursday's debate, Kelly pressed Trump about misogynistic, sexist comments he made in the past, such as calling some women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals."
Trump slammed Kelly, saying her questions were "ridiculous" and "off-base."
"You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes," Trump told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night. "Blood coming out of her wherever."
In the early 2000's Mike Judge, creator and director of
Beavis and Butthead,
King of the Hill, and
Office Space, among other television programs and films, wrote and directed a movie that a skittish Bush-era Hollywood
tried its damndest to squelch:
Idiocracy is a 2006 American satirical science fiction comedy film directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Dax Shepard, and Terry Crews. The film tells the story of two people who take part in a top-secret military hibernation experiment, only to awaken 500 years later in a dystopian society where advertising, commercialism, and cultural anti-intellectualism have run rampant and that is devoid of intellectual curiosity, social responsibility, and coherent notions of justice and human rights.
The film is not for everyone--some of the humor is decidedly lowbrow, as if Judge were already talking down to an American public in order to get his point across, and its plot line is deliberately absurd. Still, although the film is intended to depict an enervated population 500 years in the future, its imaginary depiction of a thoroughly atrophied and decrepit political system owes a direct debt to the present day American Republican Party, right down to its present-day infatuation with a certain blowhard business mogul, turned clown and TV entertainer. In
Idiocracy, Judge depicts a doltish citizenry whose lives are thoroughly permeated by and lavishly dependent on consumer brands and products:
The human population has become morbidly stupid, speak only low registers of English competently, and are profoundly anti-intellectual.
One of the funnier aspects of the film is its depiction of modern commercial brands: Starbucks has become a brothel, where one can get a "hand job" along with a cup of coffee. Carl's Jr. changes its slogan from "Don't bother me, I'm eating" to "F**k you! I'm eating." The most popular televison show is "Ow My Balls" in which men injure their testicles in "uproarious" ways, much to the amusement of slothful, junk-food gorging watchers. The most popular movie is "Ass," a continuous, 24-hour film depicting only a pair of buttocks. The hospital is called "St. God's". The police are venal, corrupt and brutal, and the legal system is a circus.
Fox News still exists, anchored by muscle-bound, half-naked Chippendales and buxom women in bondage outfits. The citizens are hapless and helpless, slaves to commercial slogans (down to their very names) with no technical or intellectual skills, and as a result the entire societal infrastructure has crumbled into hopeless disrepair. The population even forgets how to grow its own food, because the government opts to dispense a corporate-sponsored energy drink rather than water to irrigate crops.
The film was not screened for critics and was released in only seven cities, and in a limited number of theaters. 20th Century Fox was accused of deliberately abandoning the film once they got wind of its content, an assertion to which it responded with a terse "no comment:"
Others theorize that Fox disowned the film because it makes fun not only of Fox News — the studio’s sister division — but also of Starbucks, Fuddruckers and other companies that may advertise with one or more media outlets of Fox’s owner, the News Corporation.
The blog FishBowlLA quotes Luke Thompson, a movie reviewer for E! Online, as saying, “some of the sponsors may well have been unhappy with the way their products are placed, and made some phone calls to higher-ups” (mediabistro.com).
A Fox spokeswoman told The Austin American-Statesman that the studio’s handling of the movie was “an executive decision from the chairman,” and would not elaborate.
A decision not to promote this particular movie out of fear that it might offend commercial sponsors is a supreme irony in itself. Nevertheless,
Idiocracy went on to achieved cult status. Which is a good thing, because with each passing day we're seeing Judge's vision becoming a reality right before our eyes.
Donald Trump has no particular qualifications to be President, any more than the fictional professional wrestler and porn star Camacho in Idiocracy is qualified to be President. He is a celebrity entertainer who has simply announced a desire to run for President. The fact that someone so thoroughly lacking in civic credentials is approved as their leading Presidential candidate by a political party representing half of the American electorate is a testimony to a complete abandonment of social responsibility and purpose by that party. The fact that a media is willing, however derisively, to "cover" Mr. Trump's utterances as if they had any political meaning is testimony to a society that has completely lost its way, perhaps irrevocably. And for this, the organization that calls itself the Republican Party is deservedly worthy of blame.
Idiocracy isn't about a political party, though, but about a society made up of individuals who have made individual choices--to put fantasy above reality, bombast above substance, lies above truth. It's a society that can't be bothered to think and prefers to wallow in comforting illusion. It's a profoundly devolved, re-directed society with Fox News as its touchstone. It's the same society of people that attended this past week's Republican debate, applauding like drooling monkeys at a bright shiny object called Trump. From the Washington Post's Dana Milbank:
That man, Donald Trump, set the tone in the opening minutes of the main debate, when Megyn Kelly of Fox News noted that he had called women “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals.” The audience laughed.
For the record, it was well beyond Rosie O’Donnell,” Kelly pressed. “Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women’s looks. You once told a contestant on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees.”
Replied Trump: “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.”
The debate crowd applauded.
Fox News’s Chris Wallace noted that Trump had famously said that the Mexican government is sending rapists and other criminals across the border, and he asked the businessman for proof.
“So, if it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about illegal immigration, Chris,” Trump rejoined.
The crowd applauded.
They're the same crowd who force their 17 candidates to take a litmus test saying that climate change doesn't exist. These are the people who, having never spoken to a Latino or Hispanic person in their life, deride all immigration reform as "amnesty" while they shop and eat at establishments completely beholden to undocumented immigrant labor for their very existence. They're the same ones who think providing affordable health insurance to millions is something that needs to be repealed, cheering on the idea of people dying for lack of health insurance.
They're misogynists and they're racists. They view the world in very, very narrow terms. Last week they combined with a population raised on The Apprentice, American Idol, and the same other reality-based entertainment garbage that prompted people with no political interests whatsoever to make the Republican debate the most watched in history. But neither group were watching to be informed, but to be entertained. Trump offered no substantive accounting of how he'd work to address the real problems of real people in this country, least of all how he would approach issues like wage stagnation, income disparity, health care and education costs, and providing retirement security for those people who were cut down by the Great Recession and never made it back up. Trump's pronouncements were simply sound bites of blather geared for media consumption, much like the political scenes in Idiocracy. Still, the media were more than happy to cover the show and Trump's poll numbers soared as he gleefully played their game. Clearly, the audience didn't care.
Even for Republicans, there has to be something profoundly disturbing about the spectacle of elected Senators and governors tiptoeing gingerly around the Trump monstrosity. Even for Republicans who have seamlessly made the transition from representing the interests of their constituents to representing a few venal Billionaires with narrow, destructive agendas, the sight of Trump ensconced in the center of the stage has to be discomfiting. He shouldn't be there, and the fact that he is there and the Republicans have been, for the most part, too cowardly to call him out is a big problem.
For the rest of us, though, it should be a warning, an unsolicited calling card from an increasingly very disengaged, disillusioned and apathetic electorate. Trump may fall off the radar tomorrow, although that doesn't seem likely. He may be the proverbial "flash in the pan." Somehow, though, it doesn't feel that way. The media seemed to fall in line covering the Trump phenomenon too eagerly, too smoothly, almost as if they were a perfect fit for a candidate like this. One day someone less boorish, more charming and far more insidious than Donald Trump will be placed in that center stage, basking in the glow of an entranced reality-TV audience, saying exactly what he thinks voters want to hear and with motives having nothing to do with the public interest. When that happens, we can only hope the voting public isn't too bored or preoccupied with its nose buried in a "smartphone" to recognize it.