The Nature of The Beast

Warning: Donald Trump will like this column. He might even applaud me on Truth Social at 2 a.m. while on the toilet. Alas, it is going to take me a short while to get to the point.

Imagine being a fervent antiwar activist in 1970 — a bit radical, but dedicated to the idea that opposing the unfolding disaster in Vietnam should be a mainstream cause embraced by all principled people. Then, in the name of your cause, three assholes blow themselves up in a townhouse in New York City while making bombs apparently intended for an Army dance at Fort Dix, N.J.

Or let’s say you are a woman in 1900, and your issue is temperance, a well-intentioned movement that arose to confront the genuine social problem of rampant alcoholism with its attendant domestic violence, impoverished families, and few legal protections for wives. And then some wack job named Carrie Nation starts marching into taverns with a hatchet and a Bible, pulverizing bottles, mirrors, furniture and kegs of beer. Even worse, she looks like this.

Saloon owners are suddenly seen as victims, and the movement is ridiculed.

Or let’s say it’s 1885 and you are righteously opposed to pornography, prostitution, fraudulent medicines and the sexual exploitation of children, so you join the Society for the Suppression of Vice, headed by a man named Anthony Comstock. Over time, as his fame grows, Comstock becomes power-mad, and begins oozing sanctimony, targeting anything that offends his increasingly Puritanical sense of what is immoral. He manages to get the postal service to outlaw the mailing of any material pertaining to anything remotely sexual, including brochures on how to avoid and treat venereal diseases and medical books for medical students because they, y’know, mentioned pee-pees and hoohas.

Eventually, in 1905, Comstock tried to shutter a New York production of George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, a play about prostitution. Shaw responded by inventing and popularizing a word, “Comstockery,” meaning prudish, self-important moral censorship. It helped launch a free-speech movement in opposition.

These are extreme examples of a broader phenomenon known as The Boomerang Effect. It describes what happens when an intended criticism is so outlandish or over the top that it evokes sympathy for the target and animosity toward, or ridicule of, the accuser. These things can be big or little, but they always do damage:

Example of little: Let’s say it’s in the present, and you are morally and ethically opposed to the mistreatment of animals, and then you read that PETA has launched a children’s campaign to gain more respect for fish by changing their name to “sea kittens.” (This is true.) And has suggested that we replace the expression “kill two birds with one stone” with “feed two birds with one scone.” (Also true.)

Okay, we’re getting to Trump and The Daily Beast now. Thanks for your forbearance.

For months now, almost day after day without missing a day, The Beast has been hitting Donald Trump with huge headlined stories that vastly overstate the gravity of his latest misfire. It is nitpickery at its least appealing. It is not presented as satire. But today, they reached the epitome of absurdity. Here is its headline, which I am reproducing at the exact size in which it appeared:

The president’s venomous Truth Social post lost him the argument—and the spelling bee.

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So you leap eagerly to the story, and this is what you get: In a late-night post to Truth Social, Trump excoriated Fox News host Shannon Bream for using an out-of-date photo of the ballroom-in-progress during an interview with Attorney General Todd Blanche. Trump wrote:

“Why didn’t Shannon Bream, ‘Milktoast’ to her friends, show the updated pictures instead of ones that were so old and irrelevant?”

What was Trump’s big error? What was the entire focus of this hit piece? The Daily Beast explains:

“The word ‘milktoast’ does not exist. “Milquetoast,” which Trump presumably meant, comes from the comic strip character Caspar Milquetoast. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it as a “timid, meek, or unassertive person.”

That’s it.

Now, before we deploy our appropriate ridicule, let us examine this dire situation from a forensic standpoint.

1. The term “milk toast” does exist. Milk toast is an old-fashioned homey breakfast dish a million American moms used to serve their 2.6 million kids. My mom was one of those moms, and I was one of those kids. It is crisp toast, lightly buttered, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, over which has been poured warm milk. I loved it. There are still recipes for it around. It is usually spelled as two words, but the one-word version is considered an acceptable alternative. “Caspar Milquetoast” came later, an amusing corruption of the spelling, based on that dish. Here is Caspar:

   

   And here is the dish:

   

2. Even if you accept that Trump should have used the two-word formulation, the story also quotes a previous time he used that term about Ms. Bream in which he did do it as two words. Oddly, in that previous piece, they also claim that he had misspelled it, cementing the fact that they have zero idea that “milk toast,” is actually a thing. And yes, it was used as a metaphor for blandness even before cartoonist Harold T. Webster invented the Caspar Milquetoast character in 1924. And yes, it could be argued that Trump meant “milquetoast,” as it is currently used. Which brings us to the third point, which is the most important:

3. Who gives a rat’s ass about any of this????

And there is the problem. Donald Trump is an asinine incompetent making horrendous, deeply consequential errors and committing outrages that are inflicting long-term damage to the country.* If this is the sort of triviality you carp on, you are putting all legitimate criticism under suspicion of being unfair. You are emboldening those who say the media is “out to get” him. You are … Comstocking.

Now, if you argue I am making a mountain out of a molehill in savaging The Beast, you would be right. But it is a pretty high molehill, like this one …

… Because The Daily Beast has been doing this nonsense for months. Consider these very recent headlines, edited by my parentheticals.

TRUMP’S MYSTERIOUS BULGE SPARKS WILD SPECULATION (Not so mysterious. He wears oversized, ill-fitting suits, and fabric bunches up, especially on a lumpy body. It’s been noticed before.)

TRUMP, 80, FORGETS NAME OF CANDIDATE HE JUST ENDORSED

TRUMP GETS WEIRDLY SPECIFIC ABOUT “4 PERCENT MORE HAIR” TRICK (There was nothing weird about it. It was a joke, and not a bad one, and he didn’t dwell on it.)

TRUMP, 80, THREATENS TO CRY IF HE DOESN’T GET HIS WAY (This was even more clearly a joke, and an even better one, and uncharacteristically self-deprecating.)

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Like G.B. Shaw with “Comstockery,” I’d like to coin — or really, repurpose — a term to describe an action that pursues a legitimate cause with such disproportionate, self-righteous zeal that the excess begins rehabilitating the target. Let’s call it, in appropriate headline size …

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

* (Okay, maybe Trump won’t applaud me on Truth Social.)

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Here is the most recent update on Grandpa the Ingrate Cat, the stray who spent a year attacking Rachel, bloodying her arms and legs almost daily. Rachel has pursued her makeover, um, doggedly. Grandpa is becoming civilized, um, slowly. Check this out. It is short.

And finally,

Believe it or not, this is the source of my income, now. If you can, please do.

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