For days I have been reading the analyzes on the victory of Donald Trump. Two of these, yesterday, made me piss myself laughing, and sorry for the horrible phrase but there is no other term when I read certain things. Who could write and analyze the tycoon’s victory? Who had observed what was happening in America? Who had taken a tour of the places where Trump won without limiting themselves to visiting only Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and New York where Harris won? Who had thought of going beyond the Democratic National Congress in Chicago looking at what was thought in the Trump forts? No. Those who write about the US elections are those who explain everything to you from the perspective of the mistakes they themselves have made throughout their journalistic lives.
I’m talking about Antonio Polito’s pieces on Corriere della Sera and Paola Peduzz on Sheet. Which is a bit like if I went to Federer and explained to him how to make a slam. Federer would say: ‘Okay, yes, I understand, but maybe try to win a tournament first and then explain to me how to do the dumps, right?’. Instead today those who until yesterday had understood nothing, nothing about the Trump phenomenon, nothing about who would win, nothing about what was happening in America, want to explain to us why it happened.
Well. Do you know why Trump won, according to Polito? Because “he spoke the language of optimism”. Holy cow, what a clever analysis! We hadn’t thought about it. But why didn’t we say this a month ago, underlining that the motto “Make America Great Again” really worked? They took the piss out of him for years and now they explain to me that optimism was one of his success cards. Congratulations Polito, well done!
But the most beautiful thing is the incipit of Peduzzi’s piece. She says she went to Kamala Harris’ election party (congratulations: you already understood everything about who could win) and when she has to go home she looks for a taxi, finds a Sudanese taxi driver who asks her if Trump really won. And she, disconcerted, replies “with my disappointed soul” (because if right-wing journalists wear helmets they are biased, if they wear them on the left they are right) yes. And the taxi driver? Well, he happily replies: “It’s what I voted for”. But this is the sophisticated journalism of Sheet?I would like to read Langone every day, the only trampian of Sheet.
Furthermore, the taxi driver represents absolutely no one, the taxi driver who takes the reporter home represents absolutely no one. Trump won throughout America and won not only among Sudanese taxi drivers, who in truth have every right to think of a different world than the one they have been guaranteed up to now, but across a large range of American middle class who don’t give a damn about gender in New York, Boston, San Francisco, where they give a damn about gender.
from Leek Soup