Showing posts with label Jesse Watters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesse Watters. Show all posts

September 5, 2023

The Mug shot story about a picture of a haughty head has legs. Is there a tear or drop of sweat in the viral version by graffiti artist Chris Veal? I have the answer!

 



Above from the artist, Chris Veal's Instagram:

I had to.....100 degrees and Muggy out. Such a fun morning getting into it. Thanks to everyone that stopped by @billyheath and @fox5atlanta. Wanna give a HUGE thanks to George Soros for the gig. You the man.
#trump #trumpmugshot #gop#libtard #sorosmoney#trump2024 #electionfraud#Maga #djt#donaldtrump#beltline

You can follow him on Instagram here.

Just before the painting was started:

Here's a short vidio of him painting the mural:

Clearly the mug shot has mutated. Here's another example from NewsCorpse:

Here's a verison from my Sept. 3rd blog:

I wanted to put this story to bed. I really did, three blogs about the damn thing seems plenty to me. 

The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah Pt.2: Trump’s grift off mug shot may violate U.S. copyright laws
Hal Brown
Hal Brown
Published
• Sep 3
Betsy RosenblattFulton County SheriffTaylor BruckTrump Fulton CountyTrump griftTrump merchTrump mug shotTrump mugshot
0
Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall, Who Has The Most Menacing Mugshot Of Them All?
Hal Brown
Hal Brown
Published
• Aug 26
MAGA mugshotMAGA mugshotsTrump BMITrump griftTrump mugshotTrump obesemus shot
0
The Meshugana Mug Shot Megillah
Hal Brown
Hal Brown
Published
• Aug 25
Fox NewsMurdochTrum Mug ShotTrump Fulton CountyTrump Georgia arrestTrump fatTrump lies
0


But then this popped up on HUFFPOST this morning about one of Satan's fawning spawns:

Click above to read article

For those who aren't familiar with all the Fox News show hosts, Jesse Watters was competing with Tucker Carlson for who was the top smarmy sleaze ball even befor Carlson was fired.

He glommed onto this story demonstrating as I wrote the other day how the photo of a head really has developed (media) legs.

This is part of Watter's take on the mug shot and the rendition of it by artist Veal:

“The mug shot’s up on the side of buildings in the inner city. The 2016 phenomenon is happening all over again,” the prime time anchor, who has said Trump looked “good” and “hard” in the image, gushed over footage of Veal painting the piece.


“Trump won that election because of a laser-like focus on the forgotten man,” Watters continued. “A bond was formed back then that can never be broken.”
View by clicking above

From the article in HUFFPOST:

“When I saw how Fox spun my piece being painted I honestly thought, ‘Man, they’re good,’” Veal told HuffPost on Tuesday.

“I didn’t get mad,” he continued. “I was more interested to see firsthand exactly how they operate and take advantage of their viewers.”

Images of the unfinished artwork have since gone viral among conservatives.

“To see it spreading all over right-wing media is wild,” said Veal.

“Many people lack basic media literacy and these outlets know it and use it,” he added. “This is just another case of their propaganda and lying to their viewers. I hope one day people learn to see through it all.”

As for why he painted the piece?

“I honestly knew it would be an iconic image the second it was taken,” he said. “I just thought it would be funny to paint it with the quote.”


Chris Veal reacted on Instagram to how the far-right Trump cult and right-wing media is using his art:
Click above to enlarge image

Of course the finished artwork conatins the speech bubble:

I was wondering why Veal didn't show Trump with tears in his eyes or sweat on his face and then I look at the photo closely:


Could that be one tear or a drop of sweat added as a subtle editorial comment by the artist?  I don't see it in the original...

Update: I emailed Chris Veal to ask. Here's the answer from the artist himself: 

"Its actually the texture of the wall but that works haha"

My question: Could it be that the wall weeps for trump?


Here are some of the images posted on X in the replys to Acyn Torabi 's post (follow his thread here).  There are many more replies without illustrations. He is the Senior Digital Editor for MeidasTouch who put the Watter's mug shot story online. Torabi has become a major Internet influencer with 418k X followers (read about him here).

















July 12, 2023

Whether they're dim bulbs or bright lights, does it really matter?

 

Creative Commons Marcello Casal Jr on Wiki

Read most recent blog stories here.

By Hal Brown

Heather "Digby" Parton wrote this about Sen. Tommy Tuberville:

"Whether he's dim or whether he's calculated, it really doesn't matter."

It is from her Salon article: 

Senate Republicans grow more radical in the minority

Mitch McConnell may soon have a Freedom Caucus of his own to contend with

In context:

After the media went into a frenzy on Tuesday, he did finally relent and admit that that white nationalism is racist but it's pretty clear that he doesn't believe that. Like his brethren in the House Freedom Caucus, Tommy Tuberville is a MAGA performance artist and he put on quite a show. Whether he's dim or whether he's calculated, it really doesn't matter.

In one respect she's correct, although in another she's not. It does matter. This doesn't apply just to Tommy Tuberville, but to all the ultra-MAGA group from those making the news to the clownish crowds at Trump rallies and others who make up both the Trump cult MAGAs the no longer Trump worshipping MAGA world.

Consider, just in the news, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and her newsest conspiracy theory (here) 


Ask whether it matters whether or not she believes this. If she does she's not only a dim bulb but a demented bulb who needs psychiatric intervention. After all, what Philip Bump is describing as unmoored means unmoorred from reality and this is a sign of severe mental illness.

Then there's Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) who suggested "penguins" were to blame when scientists testified that Covid-19 was created in nature (story here). She was questioning scientists testifying about the origins of Covid at a House Oversight Committee meeting:

"The scientific literature, you know, the publication of the pangolin genomic sequence showed that there was a receptor binding domain," Garry said. "And it was a very important piece of data because it showed that a lot of the theories about, you know, the virus having been engineered or put together in a laboratory were not true because here was a virus in nature that had a receptor binding domain with exactly the same structure."

Malliotakis confused the research on pangolins, which resembles an anteater, with penguins.

"I just find it all interesting based on what my other colleague here, the chairman of the committee, said in reply to the issue of the penguins," she said.

To give her the benefit of the doubt I'd say her bulb is rather dim when it comes to science, nature, and even common sense considering the fact that penguins live in Antartica. Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue since lots of people don't know what pangolins are.

Then we come to the more notorious well-known purveyors of conspiracy hokuum from the once mighty Tucker Carlson to Marjorie Taylor Greene and  those who mouth the nonsense promoted by QAnon. 

Those with a brand to sell, whether politicians or pundits on the far-right, have a motive to spit the silly and stupid to the gullible. At the worst they pander hate and fear to their audience. Case in point, yet another timely example comes from Fox News host Jesse Watters who is heir apparent to Tucker Carlson:

'People told me' I have 'done more for women’s sports than Meg Rapinoe'

Excerpt:

Watters then declared, without citing any sources, that "some people have told me that I have actually done more for women's sports than Meg Rapinoe has done, that maybe she's a traitor in the war on women and I have fought valiantly in that war, obviously on the women's side. And that's not me saying that, and I actually disagree with that. I'm just saying it's something that's being said."

Watters also asserted of Rapinoe that "women have also told me because — she's a lesbian, I believe. Is that true? — that she may have a different feeling about the trans issue than straight women, that she feels an allyship. Am I using allyship correctly?" Watters wondered.

 


We just don't know whether he believes this or whether he is only hyping homophobia for his far-right audience. My hunch he is engaging in brand building. He knows this is the kind of hateful rhetoric that will increase his viewership. He knows he has big bigot boots to fill if he's ever to top Tucker. 



Getting to the title question as to whether these people are mentally dim bulbs or bright lights, I view this through the lens of a retired therapist trying to have some empathy (not easy to do) for the small army of influencers who spew their hateful propaganda to so many susceptible people. If they do do this with deliberation they should all be exiled to an inaccessible and inhospitable island where they can sustain themselves by devouring each other's flesh.

If they are clinically delusional they need and should receive psychiatric treatment.

If they are dim bulbs who were born with impaired mental capacity they ought to have remedial education. 

How's this for empathy?

Disquis comment section on bottom of page. 


December 12, 2022

The normalizing of delusional sociopathic grandiose narcissism

 The normalizing of delusional sociopathic grandiose narcissism
By Hal Brown

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Select comments may be shared here. 

I was a practicing psychotherapist for 40 years before retiring, the first 20 of those I work as the director of a small mental health center. I have posted numerous articles online about the dangerous psychopathology of Donald Trump. 

There are myriad examples of people in the news who demonstrate by their behavior, their actions and words, that they, to put it bluntly, have one or all of their hinges so loose that if they were the door on the jam it would be hanging and about to fall.

Creative Commons Flickr

I don't have to tax my brain by coming up with a list of clinically deranged people in public life. Just a look at the stories on various websites will provide many examples. A Salon article by one of my favorite columnists, Amanda Marcotte, this morning offers a list of five:

Of course these five are just losers even though Trump could actually become president again. We still have winners like Marjorie Taylor-Greene and Loren Boebert who are still in the House and now that the GOP controls it have even more power.

From Elon Musk whose unhingedness knows no bounds as he just yesterday tweeted "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci, a sentiment supported by said Rep. Greene who is saying that if she was in charge of the January 6th attack on the Capitol the crowd would have been armed (something that could end her in front of a grand jury), to Ye and Herschel Walker (who I wrote about here) 

There are enough people to be analyzed for in a PhD dissertation titled "Abnormal psychology as manifest in people in public life."

In some ways it is more disturbing to know that there are so many ordinary citizens who embrace the Big Lie and the conspiracy lunacy of QAnon. There are uncountable millions people not just in this country but around the world who, if objectively assessed by mental health professionals, would be diagnosed with one or more psychiatric conditions listed in the DSM-5.
There are several hundred diagnostic categories in the DSM  and new ones are periodically added, for example:

  • Binge Eating Disorder.
  • Caffeine Withdrawal.
  • Cannabis Withdrawal.
  • Disinhibited Social Engagement Disorder.
  • Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder- DMDD.
  • Hoarding Disorder.
  • Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder – PMDD.
 "According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), about one in five adults lives with a mental disorder (any mental illness in the US, and about one in 18 American adults has a serious mental illness. Some psychiatric conditions may be temporary, occur occasionally, and never return again." Reference includes entire list.

It should be obvious that most people with psychiatric disorders actually suffer, thus the term "suffering from" one or another disorder. There are other people who don't suffer themselves. They make  people in their lives including family, friends, and co-workers, suffer. Just consider the number of books about being married to a narcissist.

Of all of these the two most relevant disorders to consider when looking at the people I am writing about are what is now called antisocial personality disorder but is often referred to by the previous name, sociopathic disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Some people meet enough of the criteria for having both and would be considered to be malignant narcissists. This diagnosis never made it into then DSM but in my opinion and the opinion of many mental health professionals including, notably, Dr. John D. Gartner, the founder of the Duty to Warn society, Donald Trump has this disorder. Gartner wrote about this in 2017:
If any single person could be described as causing an extreme and dangerous mental pathology as becoming normalized it is Donald Trump.

Gartner is, as far as I know, the only mental health professional critical of Trump to appear on Fox News. In 2017 he was on "Watters World" in an interview which, to put it mildly, did not go well. Here's the video:


Full disclosure: Dr. Gartner and I have had a relationship since the formation of his Duty to Warn society. 

Currently the media, with some notable exceptions like MSNBC which regularly has clinical psychologist Mary Trump on and others experts discussing Donald Trump, reports the behavior of Trump and people like those mentioned above as if it is normal. 

I have followed the media closely since 2017 to see whether any mainstream publications addressed the issue of public figures like Trump, Taylor-Greene, Herschel Walker by interviewing mental health experts. 

Salon stands out for having Chauncey DeVega who often publishes interviews with mental health experts like psychiatrist Lance Dodes like "Trump is a dangerous sociopath — but he's sane enough to stand trial" and Psychiatrist Bandy Lee says White House officials told her Trump was "unraveling".

Of course, Salon with its progressive slant, can't be considered mainstream the way USA Today can. As far as I have been able to tell USA Today is the only widely circulated publication to publish a story about Trump's dangerous psychopathology.

It is about time that the mainstream media, including publications that the far right fringe considers to be fake news like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have regular columnists who are mental health experts who can analyze the behavior of public figures based on their knowledge of personality.

It is about time dangerous psychopathology stops being normalized by the media. It must be called out for what it is.

You can post comments directly by clicking below.


For some MAGA manly men, Hegseth's sexual assault and drinking charges are badges of honor worthy of a medal, by Hal M. Brown

  Republicans Look Past Sexual Assault, Alcohol Allegations Against Pete Hegseth Reading this led me to react the with title of this blog an...