Today, Joy Reid pulled a “McLuhan” on egregious Trump Flack Paris Dennard
There is a famous scene in Annie Hall in which Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are on movie line, and a guy in back of them is pontificating endlessly about Fellini and Beckett. Allen is getting more and more annoyed by the pretentious guy and finally, when the guy starts talking about Marshall McLuhan, Allen steps out of the frame and confronts the guy with the actual Marshall McLuan, who tells the pretentious fop, "You know nothing about my work." Allen then says, "Wouldn't it be great if life were really like this?"
Today, Joy Reid pulled a brilliant “McLuhan” on Trump Flack Paris Dennard.
Dennard had (apparently for the zillionth time) invoked Trump’s renting office space to Jesse Jackson’s group in 1998 as evidence of Trump’s “long history” of working for the interests of black people. Joy went to a break and came back with Jesse himself on the phone.
Jackson, of course, denied his one experience with Trump had any relevance to whether Trump cared at all today about the interests of African Americans, and said the real issue is Trump’s policies, which are bereft of any programs to help poor people of any race or any particular matters critical for African Americans.
Dennard simply blabbered in response.
(I’d like to believe Joy happened to reach Jesse this morning, but there’s a good chance she arranged it in advance, knowing Dennard always invoked Jackson.)
It’s surprising how often the scene has relevance. In 2009 I wrote about Sonia Sotomayor’s humiliation of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions in 2009 at her confirmation hearing. Sessions had invoked another Judge, Miriam Cederbaum, to try to marginalize Sotomayor’s views, saying Cederbaum (unlike Sotomayor) "believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices." Sotomayor the brought McLuhan/Cederbaum out from off-screen and said:
My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here," Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions's apparent surprise. "We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts."
And that, friends, is how you “pull a McCluhan.”