At last night's 72nd Tony Awards, Robert De Niro introduced his friend Bruce Springsteen by dropping the F-bomb about President Donald Trump. Now, neither De Niro nor Springsteen are fans of the President, but that still seems like an odd way of introduction.
But it is an excellent way to increase the chances that the President will be around for awards ceremonies nos. 75-78. It convinces absolutely no one who supported the president to change his or her mind. It's probably not possible to poll everyone who voted for President Trump in 2016, but I literally cannot imagine a single one changing his or her mind because an actor said, "Eff Trump" on national television and a roomful of showbiz folks stood up and applauded. It accomplishes nothing
towards the goal of ending the president's time in office at one term. It offers no reasons to vote against him, describes no weaknesses in his policies, provides no counter-policies that will correct the damage he has done, puts forward no new ideas that oppose his, and so on. The audience at Radio City Music Hall can clap as long as they want; neither they nor De Niro did one effin' thing to bring about a world where Donald Trump is not president when the sun sets on Jan. 20, 2021.
Yes, things were stirred up. Yes, people are talking about DeNiro's use of ye olde F-bomb (why is not exactly certain. It's not the first time he's ever said it). And they'll talk about it for a few days, maybe less if something interesting happens in Singapore while the president is meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Then it will disappear, because the number of people who care what Robert De Niro thinks is not nearly as large as he thinks it is, and all this incredibly lazy and low-cost protest gesture will have done is be buzz-worthy for about an hour and 27 minutes before being forgotten.
And it is lazy. There are sooooo many targets the president presents for those who would like to criticize him. His blinkered trade policy. His stupid tweets. His disrespect of people who disagree with him. His disrespect of his own staff. His incomplete grasp of foreign policy. His creative relationship with accuracy. His lack of character. And so on. De Niro engaged none of these with his F-bomb. He may have touched on a couple of them in the followup, but because he couldn't control his own mouth not even that will get much notice. Joe Scarborough, no fan of the president, noted on his Morning Joe talk show that Steve Schmidt, another non-fan of the president, took De Niro to task on those grounds. With his words, Schmidt said, De Niro had taken opposition to Trump down to Trump's level. Strategically that fails because Trump is the king of that level. Morally it fails because that level is not one of decency or good character.
Writing at the conservative news and opinion site The Federalist, Joseph Wulfsohn reminds us that the kind of naked disdain displayed by De Niro also motivated significant groups of 2008 and 2012 Obama voters to vote for Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016.
At National Review, Kyle Smith notes that the publicity De Niro's received overshadows the actual Tony winners who were supposed to be honored Sunday night. That probably wasn't a deliberate choice on his part -- the only reason he was there was to introduce someone else, after all. I have no way of knowing De Niro's actual thought process before he spoke, but if it didn't focus on a righteous conviction that he had to Say Something! and show his antipathy for a man he considers malignant at best I would be surprised. But De Niro is an actor, a performer, and performers have a hard time laying hold of courses of action that don't place them front and center of things, whether they should be or not.
So that's where Bobby is, at the center of the storm with issues and awards and recognition for others all taking second billing to the Man of Courage who dared to say in front of a live microphone words that probably a third of the country say amongst themselves daily. It may be hard -- mostly on others, of course -- but I told that guy off! I said, "F*&% Trump!" right out there in front of everyone!
What gets said afterwards? Hey, who the eff knows?
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