Hallo Readers,
Here’s the thing. If you are going to be a stone-cold racist, at least have the indecency to own up to it. Don’t suggest that people should go back to places they have never been to, or have run away from and have become not just a citizen of your country, but an elected representative, and then pretend you are not a racist. Don’t whip up a crowd of imbeciles with a collective IQ in double digits and smirk happily as they chant your racist views, tweet what a great crowd they are, send your lickspittle out in front of the press to stick up for you, but then, as it dawns upon you that lots of people, including those whose votes you really need to get re-elected (and thus dodge the legal proceedings which might well land you in jail) think you and your imbecilic crowd are really, really, racist, then condemn that same crowd in whose adulation you basked like a hippo in a muddy lake. In short, don’t be Donald Trump.
Trump considers people of colour to be inferior to white people. Many years ago, he and his KKK-loving father refused to rent apartments to blacks and were twice sanctioned for it. He wanted the Central Park Five to be executed, even after they had been proved innocent. He claimed Barrack Obama was not born in the United States and a Muslim. (The evidence, like the proverbial cheque, was always imminent, but never actually produced). Black political candidates were unqualified, even if they went to Harvard or Yale. Black athletes who took the knee were sons of bitches. Black TV presenters were the dumbest men or women on television. And black politicians who criticised him were and are crazy, dangerous and enemies of America. All this we knew about. But this week, he went further. Four radical female newly-elected, Democrats in Congress, all non-white, were told they should go back where they came from, even though three of them were born in the US and the fourth has lived here since she was ten years old and naturalised at seventeen. That apparently was not racist because he was criticising their politics, their hatred of America, their criticism of the country that took them, or their parents, in. And so the GOP and Fox News backed him up because that is what they do. They failed to contradict the lies he was spewing about who the women were, what they wanted, and what they had said. But even the GOP struggled to watch a baying crowd chanting of Rep Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia, ‘send her back’, for fully thirteen seconds whilst Trump paused to emphasise the momentum of that chant. Because it was chilling. It was terrifying. It suggested to every immigrant, to every child of an immigrant, to everyone who was not white, that their place was not in America, whatever the colour of their passport and the wording on their birth or naturalisation certificate. It suggested that they had no right to criticise their country, whatever the First Amendment says. It suggested that if their politics differed from Trump’s, they might either find themselves chained to the armrest on a jet heading overseas or detained charged with treason. And to avoid that fate, they had to be supine. As servile turncoat Senator Lindsay Graham told reporters, it wasn’t that Omar was Somali because ‘I think a Somali refugee embracing Trump would not have been asked to go back’. So buy your MAGA hat, keep quiet and hope for the best. Or else.
You do not have to agree with the four women – The Squad – to deplore what is happening. Both Omar and Rashida Tlaib have made some deeply offensive antisemitic comments. But you do not deport people for anti-Semitic statements, and certainly not in the name of the flag Trump is so keen to dry-hump at every opportunity. You do not question people’s citizenship and loyalties because their politics are different to your own. You either live in a democracy or you don’t. And a democracy does not threaten political opponents with deportation or suggest that the colour of their skin makes them lesser citizens. This time Trump backed down and sold his supporters down the river. But he will make it up to them. He will say it again. Because he knows that stoking up their fears and their prejudices is the best way to retain the White House in 2020 – whatever the cost. God Bless America – and God knows, it needs all the help it can get.
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We start our weekly consideration of curious clothing with pointless youth and professional son, Brooklyn Beckham, wearing Ralph Lauren.
What is Brooklyn Beckham actually for? Anyway here he is somewhere or other looking like a 1970’s history professor at a second-rate university. Hate the hair. Hate the splayed collar. Hate the tie. In short, just go away.
To Centre Court, Wimbledon, and Mirka Federer, wife of losing finalist, the wonderful Roger Federer, wearing Zimmerman.
During the match (which was totally tops), WTF received a communication from aficionado Katie from Golders Green, who was most unhappy with Mirka’s £750 frillfest, which, she said, seemed to have been stolen off a Victorian china doll. And she’s right. All Mirka needs is a bonnet.
Still in London, we are at the ITV Summer Party, graced by the presence of husband-and-wife combo and sometime X Factor Judges Robbie Williams and Ayda Field. She is wearing a dress by The Vampire’s Wife.
Robbie’s eyes are popping, as if something has been wedged up his rear end. WTF is more than happy with the diamanté butterfly brooches on his pinstripe suit, but not with the absence of something underneath the said suit, like a teeshirt. As for Ayda, whatever she is wearing, it looks very slithery and over-ruched, like something run up from granny’s old bedspread.
And now to the European premiere of The Lion King, where A listers and D listers mingled with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. First we have British singer Raye,wearing Vivienne Westwood.
Dame Viv has good days and bad days. This is a bad day. Not only does the dress look like tinfoil, but it has very ridiculous crimped and crumpled tit covers, closely resembling the way you roast a chicken with a beer bottle in the cavity.
Next up, we have TV presenter, Maya Jama, wearing Rami Kadi.
It was all going so well from shoulder to waist until the explosion of frothiness reminiscent of waves on a heaving sea at sunrise. And there is the inevitable sight of arse cheek or what might be arse cheek. WTF will say it again – arse cheek should not be on show. Or make you think that it might be.
Then there was singer Pharrell Williams, wearing Chanel.
Lovely jacket. Silly shorts. And why is he wearing white socks? Bar mitzvah boy goes bonkers…..
And finally, superstar Beyoncé wearing Vietnamese designer Cong Tre.
Why is this even happening? She is stunning. She does not need to wrap herself up like a Ferrero Rocher with no knickers.
This week’s It’s Got to Go comes from WTF aficionado, Leslie (yes, him again) and from WTF aficionado WTF (yes, her again) and it can be taken very shortly. The Republican Party. See above. Enablers. Cowardly, disgusting fuckers. The GOP deserves every iota of contempt. It’s Got to Go. And hopefully it will go and very soon.
OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Please send in your comments, as they have been sparse of late and you know how WTF frets when she is denied sight of signs of life out there. And don’t forget your utterly splendid suggestions for It’s Got To Go. Let us meet again next Friday. Be good. x
Rich pickings indeed at the Premiere including Meghan whose dress was so tight on her neck that it left a red welt. Have fun this summer!
Unless its text has changed shouldn’t “whatever the First Amendment said” be “… says”?
Yes! Thanks for that. Written rather late last night and in a fury!
…and who can blame you – this is utterly terrifying. The creep, creep of seemingly repeated history…