Click to enlarge above illustration
By Hal Brown, Read all stories here
I noticed this little article in RawStory :
Of course the popular Trump baby balloon presaged the many cartoons depictions of the president in a diaper. We all know that balloon was Trump in a diaper having a temper tantrum, but may have forgotten he was holding an iPhone. This was first flown in the summer of 2018 when it became obvious that whenever he didn’t get his way he’d have a tantrum on Twitter. It may be the only other inflatable other than the Hidenburg that has a Wikipedia page.
I doubt Trump looks at the replies to his tweets since the majority of them mock him mercifully. However he couldn’t have missed the coverage of his rallies which showed the baby balloon. There’s little worse for an extreme narcissist than being the subject of mockery. For someone as media savvy as Trump the baby balloon must have gotten under his skin, but how do you rage tweet at a balloon?
I think being lampooned on the late night shows and being played by Alec Baldwin, an A List star, on Saturday Night Live got to him more than serious critiques of him on MSNBC and in the mainstream newspapers. These he could dismiss to himself and his cult as fake news.
Now let’s go back to the most recent apt and alliterative trending hashtag description of Donald Trump. If you go to Twitter (you don’t need an account) and type #DiaperDon into the search box, or just click here, you will find tweets like this:
Having tried my hand at image manipulation I appreciate the effort it took to make these:
This news made me consider how among all the norms Trump has shattered into smithereens is how often cartoonists have depicted him either in diapers or in a straight jacket. If you do an image search for Obama and diapers you'll find this story, but not cartoons of him actually wearing a diaper. There are a few photoshops of him in a straitjacket but I couldn’t find any cartoons. Even the large majority of Obama’s many critics didn't think it would resonate if they described him as crazy or infantile.
Compare this to Trump cartoons. Do a web image search for Trump diaper cartoons and you will find many more than the nine I put in the illustration above. Search Google Images or Duck Duck Go images for Trump straitjacket cartoons and you’ll come up with numerous examples too:
Trump being developmentally stuck in the tantrum stage of childhood and being a candidate for at the least a formal psychiatric evaluation are overlapping characteristics that have defined Trump. These have made it glaringly obvious to the vast majority of mental health professionals who have been observing him, some writing about his dangerous psychopathology (like me) and others just feeling and expressing horror to their friends and associates that he is psychologically unfit to be president. In fact, #UNFIT is the title of a documentary Dr. John Gartner made about him. It received many rave reviews.
Thanks to John Gartner, founder of the Duty to Warn group, who first used it in describing the president the description of Trump as a malignant narcissist the term is being used not just by mental health professionals in the media but others as well.
If anyone who isn’t in the tank for Trump hears the words “dangerous case” they immediately think of Donald Trump thanks to the best seller edited by Bandy Lee title The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump. @DangerousCase is also on Twitter.
The late night comics, satirists, and editorial cartoonists have helped us stay sane even though at times it felt we were laughing on the way to the gallows.
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