Donald Trump is an ass, ‘Daddy’ edition: Daily Bullshit, September 17, 2017

Updates

  1. Originally published, September 17, 4:34 am. And just so we’re keeping score, predecessors in the “Donald Trump is an ass” series are here, here, here, and here.
  2. September 17, 11:54 am:
    • I’m leaving this on Joe Arpaio’s pardon here:

      The Protect Democracy Project (PDP), a group of former Obama administration lawyers, contend in their proposed amicus brief that [Donald] Trump’s pardon of [Joe] Arpaio violates due process and separation of powers. Thus, Judge [Susan] Bolton should declare the pardon null and void.[1]


Donald Trump

Usually, I hold off publishing an issue of the (Supposedly) Daily Bullshit when I only have one article unless I have some substantial commentary to offer. But Rachel Kraus’s article is valuable not only for its insights about the relationship between Ivanka Trump and her father, Donald, but for some broader cultural commentary in the category of stuff I suspected but hadn’t seen documented: Kraus doesn’t really document it here either but rather takes it for granted, which seems rather surprising for me: I think I should have seen something along these lines somewhere along the way in those thirteen years I was back in school on the way to my Ph.D. if it was really so elemental.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying Kraus is wrong. Rather, I think Kraus is probably overwhelmingly right. Her work looks to me like good critical analysis and I find no fault whatsoever with her conclusions. I don’t know how else you interpret, for example, chastity balls where daughters pledge their virginity to their fathers (not one of Kraus’s examples). I agree with Kraus’s analysis of the father walking the bride down the aisle to essentially hand her off to the groom. These are displays of ownership and control, relics of an era when women were chattel. And of course, Kraus is right in tying Ivanka’s label for her father, “Daddy,” to kink,[2] although I’m thinking more along the lines of incest (which Kraus doesn’t quite take up but also doesn’t really exclude).

So it’s Sunday. Read Kraus’s article. It’s so worth it.

Rachel Kraus, “Dissecting Donald and Ivanka’s Relationship, with the Help of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 16, 2017, http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/dissecting-donald-ivankas-relationship-help-sylvia-plaths-daddy/


Joe Arpaio

Marjorie Cohn, “Will Judge Overturn Arpaio Pardon?” Truthout, September 17, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41965-lawyers-ask-judge-to-overturn-arpaio-pardon


  1. [1]Marjorie Cohn, “Will Judge Overturn Arpaio Pardon?” Truthout, September 17, 2017, http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41965-lawyers-ask-judge-to-overturn-arpaio-pardon
  2. [2]Rachel Kraus, “Dissecting Donald and Ivanka’s Relationship, with the Help of Sylvia Plath’s ‘Daddy,’” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 16, 2017, http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/dissecting-donald-ivankas-relationship-help-sylvia-plaths-daddy/

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