By Hal Brown
Robin Givhan (profile) is the senior critic at large for the Washington Post. She writes about politics, race and the arts. She won a Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2006. I thought her column from yesterday was particularly well-written that portions in it and deserved to be shared.
Trump’s impeachment trial lawyers have been widely criticized but of all the skewering of their performances none that I read came close to being as piercing and well-written as what Givhan wrote in her Washington Post essay published in their The Critique Perspective section: In an avalanche of words, there’s no sign of regret from Trump (subscription).
I was struck by the her use of the “best words” in this column. Merely knowing the best words and being able to put them together in a compelling way are obviously quite different. In her title even “avalanche of words” is evocative of an actual avalanche. In my opinion this a better choice of words than alternatives like torrent or deluge.
I can’t write “best words” that without remembering this classic:
During the 2016 presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump said at a campaign stop in South Carolina on Dec. 30, 2015, that "I'm very highly educated. I know words, I know the best words. But there's no better word than stupid." Watch 30 second video here.
Here are Robin Givhan’s best words about the Trump lawyers:
Trump has lawyers representing him. It might be an exaggeration to say they are defending him, perhaps because he doesn’t believe he requires protection or justification. He had a tag-team of lawyers who spoke words on his behalf, beginning with Bruce L. Castor Jr., who mistakenly introduced himself as the prosecutor that he once was. Castor, dressed in a gray-pinstriped suit that billowed around his torso and his arms and his shoulders, began the day by cracking open a very large can of nonsensical phrases and irrelevant sentences and dumping them on the Senate floor, leaving his co-counsel David Schoen to try to mop up the mess.
Castor, despite speaking for more than an hour, managed to avoid uttering a single ample paragraph in defense of the former president. He did manage, however, to muse about Athens and Rome, the history of republicanism, the temperament of the modern senator and the difficulty of navigating a car in the nation’s capital.
Schoen mostly yelled his remarks like a man who realizes that the Muses have failed him and so he must go it alone on sheer volume and dire warnings. He tossed around the word “radical” to describe the process of impeachment. He warned that a trial would create a precedent that would allow the House to reach back in time and start a flurry of retroactive impeaching of former officials. Schoen spoke at length in a magnificent display of vocal endurance helped along by big glub-glub-glubbing swigs from a plastic bottle of water.
Here she points out one of what I think is the biggest weakness in the Trump defense (my bold added):
These two lawyers, who signed on to the case less than a fortnight ago, seemed to be one with Trump’s most ardent apologists, who argue that his words shouldn’t be taken literally, that his words don’t matter, even though he is a man whose excessive verbiage propelled him to political success. Trump — as candidate and commander in chief — could speak for more than an hour at a time, tirelessly spewing grievance and anger. He had a seemingly bottomless well of vicious, mean and terrorizing words. He tweeted them, he called them into radio shows, he spoke them on video, he vomited them out at rallies. Trump’s words fed a hunger. His fans lovingly called him plain-spoken, even as his legal defenders argue that what he was speaking really had no influence on those who were listening.
I hope that the House managers show how Trump hears what his crowd is saying and always knows how to rile them up. They should point out that on January 6th he heard their shouts and had to know they were primed to storm the Capitol.
I would never claim to have the best words myself but I appreciate writers who do. Jennifer Senior, a NY Times columnist came up with “preening narcissist” to describe Trump, for example.
These are the particular words (in bold) I liked the best from Robin Givhan:
- Castor, dressed in a gray-pinstriped suit that billowed around his torso and his arms and his shoulders, began the day by cracking open a very large can of nonsensical phrases and irrelevant sentences and dumping them on the Senate floor, leaving his co-counsel David Schoen to try to mop up the mess.
- Schoen mostly yelled his remarks like a man who realizes that the Muses have failed him and so he must go it alone on sheer volume and dire warnings.
- Schoen spoke at length in a magnificent display of vocal endurance helped along by big glub-glub-glubbing swigs from a plastic bottle of water.
In the following sentences her juxtaposition of Trump vomiting his words at rallies and his feeding the hunger of his supporters is not accidental. This is how a writer who knows how to compose the best words writes:
- He had a seemingly bottomless well of vicious, mean and terrorizing words. He tweeted them, he called them into radio shows, he spoke them on video, he vomited them out at rallies. Trump’s words fed a hunger.
Without spelling it out she creates the imagery of MAGA crowds being fed vomit and eagerly consuming it. It is easy to be gross. Creating a gross mental image without actually being gross takes skill.
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The primary reason I subscribe to New York Times and The Washington Post is to read their opinion writers. Some are excellent expository writers but others additionally have a creative flair, a way with words, that is all too rare in political writing.
Among my favorites are Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, and Heather “Digby” Parton along with Amanda Marcotte who write for Salon. I used to like Maureen Dowd who has written a NY Times column since 1983 but I think she has lost her edge.
Who are your favorites?
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Addendum: My original title for this was “WaPo’s Robin Givhan offers the best skewering...” and I changed it to “biting skewering” not only because I used the word “best” twice but because “biting” and a skewer of food went together. As I often do, in this diary I made an image that I thought illustrated at least part of the story. I am one of the few community posters who does this.
The Poll
As more and more websites go behind a paywall we have to rely on sites that that summarize stories published on pay websites to read what they are publishing. I use RawStory for this. They will summarize articles from websites I don’t subscribe to like The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, and sites that recently started charging for premium content like The Daily Beast and Slate, as well as from websites like Vanity Fair and The Atlantic which limit how many articles you can click on.