What was Robert De Niro thinking?
You may have heard about actor Robert De Niro’s standing O performance at last night’s Tony awards. It was bleeped from the broadcast but is readily available:
And so, to the question in the title of this post, you may answer in kind “who gives a f*** what De Niro was thinking?” Or: “nothing at all.”
My answer is that I care because it’s symptomatic of the breakdown of civility on the left and in the acting profession as a result of TDS, which is completely rampant. The most interesting thing is not really De Niro so much as the overwhelmingly positive reaction of the crowd.
We already know that the vast majority of people in the arts are on the left. We know they hate Trump; that’s no surprise. But the relish with which so many of them (not all, but many) applauded De Niro’s essentially mindless, contentless display of expletive-laced hatred has no point except as mob virtue-signaling. But what is the “virtue” in yelling the f-word at someone? Wouldn’t a sentence or two as to what’s wrong with Trump, why one might oppose him or his policies, have been better?
The problem is that an approach like that wouldn’t have gotten much press. But what De Niro did went viral.
That had to have been his goal. De Niro was a great actor in his prime, but his prime is long past. That happens to the best of us, and it’s not always easy to take. In this case he had a bully pulpit for a change and chose to use it to get attention for an exceptionally juvenile show.
It also reminded me of this:
Early in the life of the blog (January 2005, practically ancient history) I wrote a post entitled “The fine art of insulting half your audience.” Part of it read like this (here I’m writing about authors, but it could be someone in any of the arts):
The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know””well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral””oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too””not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush…
Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.
I don’t think this even occurs to you. I think you just assume that anyone perceptive and intelligent and downright nuanced enough to be reading your fabulous work couldn’t possibly””no, say it isn’t so, Joe!!””support that disgusting, repulsive, lying POS Bush. Or maybe you just don’t care. Maybe you don’t want people like that for your audience…
And this from people who consider themselves culturally and morally superior, although this sense of superiority doesn’t seem to reside in their needing to prove themselves to be well-informed or logical or knowledgeable about the issues””just in letting the world know that they’re on the right side of them (which would be the left side, naturalment).
Nothing has changed except that it’s gotten far worse in every way, and of course it’s no longer about Bush, although if he were to somehow re-enter public life, that would start up again, too.
Quite a few people have pointed out that the footage of De Niro and that audience standing up could make a very good campaign ad for 2018 or 2020. The hatred that our cultural betters (in their humble opinion) have for the people who attend their plays is strikingly apparent, and it doesn’t sit well with middle America. And yes, middle America is a big big part of the audience for Broadway shows. People come to New York on vacation and plan ahead, getting tickets that put them back quite a pretty penny. They don’t like to think they’re being entertained by people who have contempt and even hatred for them.
[NOTE: By the way, the big winner at the Tonys was the musical “The Band’s Visit.” I’ve seen it, loved it, and highly recommend it. Among other things, the show completely avoids all politics in a plot that could have been very political indeed: it’s about an Egyptian band that takes a wrong turn and winds up in a town in the Israeli desert where nothing ever happens. It’s a quiet, contemplative, funny evening of theater about adults whose lives contain some disappointments, featuring beautiful music, thoughtful lyrics, and a performance by Katrina Lenk that will knock your socks off.
And if it seems strange that I talk up that show in the context of this post—well, I loved “The Band’s Visit,” I used to love theater, and I don’t think every single person in that crowd applauded De Niro or should be punished for what he said.]
Maybe they all went to the same school as Hillary where the use of gratiuitous insults is approved and encouraged. Remember when Hillary called part of tne population a bunch of redneck knuckle dragging deplorables and she wanted our vote? What was she thinking?
The puerile antics and the hysterical utterances of SJWs and leftist celebrities prove, beyond all doubt, that believers in the One True Progressive Faith are far more intolerant, and far less civil, than any of the religious believers they despise and often belittle.
I had an exchange over the weekend with a facebook poster. I have generally avoided doing that, but I couldn’t let his comments go by when he said all Trump supporters were either undereducated, vocabulary limited dimwits , or morally degenerate.
When I challenged him with my own case of a PhD, he came back by lying, and saying he wasn’t talking about all Trump people, but then again repeated the accusation in another form… sigh.
I then pointed out his hatred of Trump was causing him to project this hatred onto every individual who may have supported Trump and had actual rational reasons. At that point I gave up as his hatred has so blinded him he couldn’t even understand what I was saying. Now this is a guy who is ex-Army, and was upset by Fast and Furious. But the Trump hatred is so just seething out of him that his rational faculties have been sidetracked.
I really wish “Dr.Sanity” was back on line. It’s really a fascinating psychological phenomenon.
The arts didn’t distinguished themselves in the last century, nor in this one either. Fascism, communism, whatever, artists hustled to get into the front ranks. I try to keep in mind that even the entertainment that I enjoy was likely made and performed by folks of raging intolerance and low morals. Shame that.
j e,
These believers are also totally uninformed. If they spent 1/10 the time reading and studying as they do worrying about clothes, makeup, and which restaurants are cool, they might be worth listening to.
Kurt Schlichter https://twitter.com/KurtSchlichter regularly tweets, of the “mass media” – “They hate you. Really hate you. Act accordingly.”
And something to the effect of “Liberals won’t like having to live in the world that they’re creating.”
The left, the movie stars, the producers, most of the writers, hate us. Act accordingly.
I applaud the vile, hysterical actions of the sjwers. Let the unmasking continue.
I go back to what I have been thinking for months and months now: The Dems/Progs are just besides themselves with the reality that the smartest woman in the world lost a rigged election to a person that has never held elected office. They have trouble with reality to start with, this just exacerbates everything.
I say there is a better than even chance that DeNiro, and any others doing the same anti-Trump sort of things, does this to stay in the news and secure new work. Laughing all the way to the bank. The real bad guys, to me, are the ones that fall for it.
De Niro’s incantation reminds me of a church congregation affirming “AMEN” after a vital Article of Faith is repeated and reaffirmed. It’s a religious movement out there, not with a God (unless that was President Hopenchange) but with a devil (guess who?). And if you’re a congregant, you had better get with the program and ritualistically chant “AMEN” whenever a fellow congregant invokes the overriding Article of Faith — that Donald J. Trump is upper-case-E Evil, that he is to be effed (and that his daughter is a ****).
It’s Orwell’s ritualized two-minutes hate, wrought postmodern:
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in. Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.” — George Orwell, “1984”
I saw these comments elsewhere:
>>>and just like that, I am gong to vote Trump from this point on, I have always been a liberal and voted for Obama but these relentless nasty and vulgar attacks has made me sick of these celebs that continue to act like toddlers throwing tantrums. It is not classy and exasperating to hear day in and day out.
>>>De Niro doesn’t realize he will never be in a hit movie for the rest of his life. Never.
>>>That’s saying exactly “f*** half of America, f*** elections, and f*** our constitution”.
“Actor John Cusack calls for coup against president, says he must be ‘eradicated by any means’…”
Certainly virtue signaling and seeking attention are involved but I think it for many it goes deeper than that, many are entirely serious.
I was watching the Tonys with my college-age daughter when DeNiro’s entire opening remark was completely bleeped. Thought it was a glitch with the sound on my TV, but when it happened a second time, I knew it was censored and I told my daughter that it was surely profanities related to Trump. DeNiro has become completely deranged on the subject of POTUS. Beyond the staggering self-absorption, which was on display all evening of course, I thought that DeNiro shortchanged Bruce Springsteen, whom he was supposed to be introducing. I know that Springsteen likely shares DeNiro’s sentiments, but still, it was a tacky thing to do.
I had heard little of The Band’s Visit before the show swept the awards. Now I’m intrigued. Believe it or not, Spongebob the Musical is actually a wonderful show. Exuberant and clever and very original.with great production values and music.
That’s like Bill Maher hoping the economy crashes so that Trump is dethroned.
They think Trump is so horrible for the country that they want a horrible thing to happen to the country to get rid of him.
Liberal Logic.
I love musical theatre–both as a performer and as an audience member. Earlier in the evening, there was this, from John Leguizamo: “Theater teaches us how to understand other people–how to feel empathy for those who are not like us.” I found that ironic. That understanding and empathy clearly does not extend to people of a different political persuasion.
Even though, as others noted, the hate for those not-like-them is real & visceral & they would act on it in a heartbeat if they could pay someone else to do the dirty work, these are precisely the same people that 5 years ago would have been licking Trump’s shoes to get his financial backing or to have a weekend at one of his resorts.
Keep the cameras & microphones live & running. This is how the Blue Wave is rinsed down the drain & Trump 2020 becomes a reality.
M J R:
The Two Minutes’ Hate with smiles and glam.
I am old enough to remember when my little brother came up to Mother–with our sainted grandmother in attendance–and asked: “is (deleted) a bad word?”. I thought Mother would faint, but, being made of sterner stuff, she recovered and whisked him off to the back of the house post haste for some counseling. I don’t think Grandmother even knew what the word meant.
I know many would say that we were repressed back in those days; but, voluntary civility is not the same as repression.
I am not sure when it occurred, but for some reason the use of that particular vulgarity is now thought to be a sign of sophistication in the imagination of some. This Old Sailor has heard his share of most vulgarities, and used some in certain circumstances. Now, however, they have become disgustingly prevalent in so-called polite society. I find that I have laid aside a number of reading materials over the past year or so, because the gratuitous, and repetitive, use of the “F” word simply became annoyingly boring. I can only assume that the author has little else to offer and so fills the gaps with muck.
On another level, I have often said that those who worry about mass killings and random violence really need to think about the effect on vulnerable souls when the entertainment industry dehumanize people, as they do most obviously by presenting ubiquitous scenes of violence and mayhem as though they were routine. But, these self proclaimed icons of culture also deliver a less than subtle message that “anything goes” when they step into the gutter, and signal by their words and deeds that any with whom they disagree are beneath contempt.
Generally, I expect the worst from De Niro and the like, and in that regard they usually do not disappoint. Fie on them all.
Truman Capote had a saying, “the better the actor, the stupider the person.” That was fully on display yesterday evening. It also goes a long way in understanding DC which has been described as Hollywood for ugly people.
I saw “The Bands Visit” quite a while ago, but it was an Israeli comedy film. The movie is very low key and quite funny, no doubt the basis of the Broadway show.
Paul in Boston:
That movie was indeed the basis for the show.
The music and performances are very good.
DeNiro made his living pretending to be someone else. That was his contribution to our society. Pretense. How does a working life of pretense qualify him to critique Trump? I worked as a computer programmer and wondered why people would pay me to do something I enjoyed so much.
My guess is that Bobby De has some personal issue with The Donald that long predates the latter’s presidency. Maybe something about a woman.
The meme makers never sleep.
This just in…
https://gab.ai/MrWazzo/posts/27339505
Q: What was he thinking?
A: He wasn’t.
What was DeNiro thinking? Here’s my guess: “I’m going to show my fellow travelers what a tough, perceptive, cool guy I am. They’ll love it.” And they did.
What he said was, in my day, fighting words. He knows that it’s never going to come to blows, so he can act like he would relish such an encounter. In other words, DeNiro is a punk strutting around like a banty rooster when he’s actually a weasel. A real deplorable.
Those that bash Trump like this have no idea that they are bashing those who voted for him – roughly half the country.
They need to ask Hillary how well it worked for her to bash half the country? (not that she would be able to give an honest answer)
I had a favorite author some years ago. He wrote a book called “The Shipkiller” which is the best modern sailing novel I’ve read. He also wrote some other mystery novels set in Connecticut and I read a couple and then one had a Bush attack in it and I just stopped.
Why cut off half your audience?
Which tells you it’s not The Donald that they hate so much but his supporters.
mkent; John Guilfoyle:
I don’t think these particular people were sucking up to Trump 5 years ago. He wasn’t especially popular with that crowd even back then, I’m pretty sure.
Yes, if he were about to back their plays I think they would have done so, however. But I don’t think that he was ever into theatrical investments of that type.
Hulk smash!
Mike K Says:
June 11th, 2018 at 8:44 pm
I had a favorite author some years ago. He wrote a book called “The Shipkiller” which is the best modern sailing novel I’ve read. He also wrote some other mystery novels set in Connecticut and I read a couple and then one had a Bush attack in it and I just stopped.
Why cut off half your audience?
* * *
I feel the same way about profanity in general in books. Yes it can be used to great effect in small doses, but ubiquity just makes me put down the book or shut off the show.
Combine political insults with profanity and you get a two-fer downer.
DeNiro is a drop out and Trump has a prestigious education.
Jealousy? Self estimation problems?
If I hadn’t been around for a little while I’d think this was a one time thing, this anger at Trump, but Bush was Hitler, and dumb, Reagan was dumb. So whoever the republican president is is both dumb and basically a tyrant. I also find it odd the lefties don’t see the contradiction in making the most vicious and vile attacks on republicans over behavior that is nowhere near as bad as their own behavior.
charles, 8:43 pm — “Those that bash Trump like this have no idea that they are bashing those who voted for him — roughly half the country.”
I respectfully disagree. I believe they know full well “that they are bashing those who voted for him” — they enjoy it, they are practically addicted to it (in that they desperately need their periodic fix of smug superiority), and they deliriously revel in the camaraderie of the Morally Lofty.
I have had reason to hate hate. I chose not to.What’s De Niro’s excuse?
‘
Hate will kill you.
FWIW, De Niro is married to a Black/Native American woman, as well as being fully immersed in the progressive Hollywood bubble.
Which isn’t an excuse, but a way of understanding his situation.
These people believe they are fighting Nazis and it feels good to feel like you are fighting Nazis. And if De Niro were fighting Nazis and said, “F*** Hitler,” I’d agree.
But the problem is that the half of America which supports Trump are not Nazis. Reality counts but the so-called, self-labeled, reality-based community is anything but.
This was the problem with the Episcopalian Church I attended in the 2000s. When I would question the strong anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War stands the church took, the members would invariably respond that righteous Christian churches took political stands opposing the Nazis.
Which is all well and good — I know the history — but it left out the crucial step of how did supporting Bush 43 or the Iraq War make me or anyone a Nazi?
All that remained to me was to leave the church or submit to repentance and re-education.
Once you’re reduced to arguing, “I am not a Nazi (or racist or misogynist or homophobe or whatever),” you’re toast. The next step, which Eric Raymond aptly terms “kafkatrapping,” is for your inquisitors to respond, “That you deny it, proves you are.”
Most actors do not think at all. Such activity is totally alien to them. They just act to please the public and know quite well how to accomplish this.
I also think this is terrible.
If I were De Niro I would’ve went with “LOCK HIM UP”!
Agreed. Everyone knows its fighting Russian aggression that makes one a Nazi.
Between DeNiro’s and Samantha Bee’s comments, Trump gained at least 200,000 votes for 2020. Keep it up, lefties!
“Why cut off half your audience?”
Entertainers used to understand this instinctively. Johnny Carson did topical political humor for 30 years on the Tonight Show but you could never tell if he was a Republican or Democrat. They are insane now.
“fighting Russian aggression”
You are too funny manju. Dems wanted to appease Russia for 70 years (“more flexible after the election”) and then on 11/8/16 they suddenly tried to make Joe McCarthy look like a pinko. The idea that you have any principles is a laugh.
Like Rob Reiner who dreamed up the “Committee to Investigate Russia”. From *HOLLYWOOD* bwahahahaha?!?!?! They still whine about the ’50s “blacklist” which was people who were pro-Russia when it was run by *Stalin*!
as usual a Hollywood jackass “not thinking”
FOAF, its easy to forget but Dems were the original anti-communists. At the time, Republicans were hampered by Isolationism.
From the Truman Doctrine to Mutually Assured Destruction, from George Kennan to Robert McNamara, American Anti-Communism has its roots in the left-wing Party.
Counter-intuitive. I know. Not unlike Jim Crow. But that’s history.
Republicans, as I mentioned, were hampered by Isolationism, often called America-First.
The more things change…