O

n Oct. 11, 1975, NBC 
released a show called 
“Saturday 
Night 

Live,” which brought with it 
a 
revolutionary 

new 
genre 
that 

was 
based 
around 

sketch comedy. One 
particular 
recurring 

sketch within the first 
few episodes set a 
successful tone that the 
show, and many others 
like it, would continue. 
Cast member Chevy 
Chase sat behind a 
desk in a mock Oval 
Office 
and 
clumsily 

reported to the United States 
as the president and University 
alum, Gerald Ford. The era of 
television’s comedic presidential 
impersonations began with Chevy 
Chase 
hilariously 
capitalizing 

on the fact that President Ford 
unfortunately had a few accidents 
that made him appear clumsy and 
awkward — traits that “SNL” and 
Chase transformed into comedic 
gold. And all of this was received, 
both by the American public and by 
Ford, to some degree, in a positive 
and jovial way. 

And this sketch continued. 

Every president and presidential 
candidate following Gerald Ford 
was impersonated and recreated 
through several talented actors 
capitalizing on any trivial claim 
that could be stretched and 
overacted to make America laugh. 
From Dana Carvey as the WASP-y 
and nasally George H.W. Bush, 
to Kate McKinnon playing the 
almost robotic Secretary Hillary 

Clinton, “SNL” used the men and 
women seeking and holding the 
office of the president as a means 
of relatable comedy. It was all 

easy to write, easy to 
act and recognizable 
to 
every 
American. 

It suddenly became 
part of the job — when 
becoming 
president, 

you 
should 
expect 

your own comedic and 
moronic doppelganger 
to constantly satirize 
every potential choice 
you make.

So when the first 

episode 
of 
“SNL” 

following the election capitalized 
on the fact that the Trump 
transition was not running as 
smoothly as some had hoped, Alec 
Baldwin put his incredible acting 
skills and the seemingly endless 
amount of comedic material to 
use. He delivered a hilarious 
performance of our president-elect, 
frantically asking Siri, “How do I 
beat ISIS?” and realizing that the 
border along Mexico is actually 
2,000 miles long.

And almost right on schedule, 

our president-elect dropped all 
other 
“adult” 
responsibilities 

surrounding 
the 
peaceful 

transition 
of 
presidential 

administrations, and fell again 
into his juvenile and bully-
like Twitter rants in which he 
condemned the entirety of “SNL” 
and the poor impersonation they 
had presented of him. This trend, 
this ongoing sketch that satirizes 
the most recognizable position in 
the world, is crossing the line for 

our president-elect.

Yet, I view this single outburst of 

angry emotion from a 70-year-old 
billionaire as one of many that prove 
to serve as testament to the fragility 
of his ego and the focus of his actual 
attention. Throughout the entirety 
of his life, President-elect Trump 
has 
focused 
an 
unbelievable 

amount of time, money and effort 
toward the retribution of those 
who criticize his name, looks 
and actions. From the constant 
threatening 
correspondence 

toward 
Spy 
Magazine, 
which 

stated he was a “short-fingered 
vulgarian,” to the actual lawsuits he 
filed against comedian Bill Maher, 
who stated he would donate $5 
million to charity if birther Donald 
Trump could prove his mother was 
not an orange-haired orangutan, 
Trump hunted down any critique 
of himself with every asset on hand. 
Anyone who damages his ego is a 
viable target, and as demonstrated 
by the “failing” New York Times in 
its piece, “The 282 People, Places 
and Things Donald Trump has 
insulted on Twitter” — a list that 
includes every single major-party 
presidential 
candidate, 
entire 

nations, every major TV network, 
journalists, the residential lectern 
in the White House, a gold star 
family and my favorite, the pope.

And one could assume that all 

of those petty and ridiculous rants 
and immature verbal onslaughts 
usually ending in “Bad!!” would 
somehow 
guarantee 
that 
this 

insufferable 5-year-old would be 
deemed incapable of becoming 
president. 
Yet 
America 
has 

surprised us all again.

But now Trump and his fragile 

image of himself holds the most 
powerful office in the world. 
And the implications of this 
situation should be very clear. His 
pettiness and lack of affability 
toward comedic representations 
of himself have been blatantly 
demonstrated 
throughout 
the 

entirety of his public life. The 
man cannot stand an ounce of 
criticism — whether it be Alec 
Baldwin simply restating things 
Trump has said verbatim, or 
the pope saying that building 
walls is not the Christian answer 
to immigration issues, he has 
countered with some of the 
most deplorable and disgusting 
rhetoric 
within 
American 

political discourse.

So if it is even possible, set aside 

the other horrific factors that will 
become the Trump presidency. 
Set aside Vice President-elect 
Mike Pence and his blatant hatred 
toward women’s and LGBTQ 
rights. Set aside National Security 
Adviser Mike Flynn, who believes 
Islam is an ideology meant to 
destroy America. Set aside Steve 
Bannon, a man who has been 
the voice for racists and white 
supremacists across the country. 
Set 
aside 
every 
disturbing 

thought associated with who and 
what will influence this future 
administration, and simply picture 
how Trump will respond to such 
goofy and comical criticisms from 
“SNL” when he has the power of 
presidency behind him.

4 — Tuesday, November 29, 2016
Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

LAURA SCHINAGLE

Managing Editor

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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

T

he Oxford Dictionaries 
just named “post-truth” 
the word of the year. They 

define “post-truth” as “relating 
to or denoting circumstances 
in which objective facts are less 
influential in shaping 
public opinion than 
appeals to emotion 
and 
personal 

belief.” The popular 
examples of “post-
truth” 
culture 
are 

the rhetoric used by 
the Brexit campaign 
and Donald Trump’s 
campaign.

There’s 
an 

interview with Newt 
Gingrich at the RNC 
that 
is 
painfully 

representative of the 
“post-truth” 
era. 
A 

news anchor says to Gingrich 
that violent crime rates are 
down. Gingrich corrects her 
that there are some cities 
where violent crime is up, and 
the 
news 
anchor 
concedes 

this point, but maintains that 
though in some places violent 
crime is up, nationally violent 
crime rates are down. Gingrich 
says that doesn’t matter. He says 
that when everyday Americans 
wake up in the morning, they 
don’t feel safe, and they feel like 
violent crime rates are up. The 
news anchor says they might 
feel that way, but the facts 
say otherwise: Violent crime 
rates are down; we are “safer.” 
Gingrich then says, “No, that’s 
your view” and she says, “No, 
these are facts,” these are FBI 
statistics, and he says, “What I 
said is also a fact.”

No, what Gingrich says is 

not a fact, it’s a belief. But 
we 
can’t 
just 
dismiss 
the 

conflation between facts and 
beliefs as something only done 
by power hungry, insincere 
politicians. 
The 
distinction 

between facts and beliefs is 
increasingly blurred, and not 
only in the realm of electoral 
politics. There is, in fact, a legal 
precedent for the murky and 
vanishing difference between 
facts and beliefs, and it’s found 
in the Supreme Court ruling in 
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 

the court ruled that closely held 
for-profit private corporations 
can be exempt from certain 
laws 
that 
go 
against 
the 

corporation owner’s “sincerely 
held religious beliefs” if there 
is another way to enforce the 
law through means that won’t 
violate the owner’s religious 
beliefs. What I’m interested in 
is the concept of a “sincerely 
held religious belief.”

The “sincerely held religious 

belief” in question in this case 
had to do with contraception. 
The Green family, the owners 
of Hobby Lobby, and the Hahn 
Family, the owners of Conestoga 

Wood 
Specialties, 

both rejected having 
to 
provide 
their 

employees 
with 

access 
(through 

insurance under the 
Affordable Care Act) 
to four specific types 
of 
birth 
control: 

IUDs, 
copper 

and 
hormonal, 

and 
emergency 

contraception 
pills, 

Plan B and ella.

The Greens and 

the Hahns believe(d) 
that 
life 
begins 
at 

conception, and by conception 
they mean fertilization. They 
morally 
reject 
these 
four 

types of birth control because 
they think they can prevent a 
fertilized egg from implanting 
in the uterus, which they 
consider to be an abortion. The 
issue here is that scientists who 
actually study contraceptives 

and the reproductive system 
say that IUDs and emergency 
contraceptive pills do not stop 
an already fertilized egg from 
implanting in the uterus.

IUDs 
and 
emergency 

contraceptive pills will not 
stop an existing pregnancy. 
They are not abortion pills. 
Emergency 
contraception 

works by preventing the sperm 
from fertilizing the egg, either 
by trapping the sperm in mucus 
or preventing the egg from 
being released and fertilized, 
depending on the kind of 
contraception you take. If the 
sperm has already fertilized 
the 
egg, 
the 
emergency 

contraception will have no 
impact. It will not stop a 
fertilized egg from implanting 
in the uterus and it will not do 
anything if a fertilized egg has 

already implanted in the uterus.

This is all to say: There are 

factual, biological explanations 
for how these processes work. 
But in the Hobby Lobby case, 
SCOTUS decided that none of 
this matters: It doesn’t matter 
if your beliefs are factually 
accurate so long as they are 
sincerely held. It doesn’t matter 
that emergency contraception 
doesn’t cause an abortion, it 
only matters that people feel 
like emergency contraception 
causes an abortion. In effect, 
SCOTUS ruled that facts matter 
less 
than 
certain 
powerful 

people’s feelings.

The interview with Gingrich 

and the SCOTUS ruling in favor 
of Hobby Lobby support Oxford 
Dictionaries’ 
nomination 
of 

“post-truth” as the word of the 
year. Objective facts appear to 
have lost ground in the minds 
of many people in our country, 
evident in statements from 
current politicians, but also 
extending back to Hobby Lobby 
and beyond.

What’s 
also 
problematic 

is that this acceptance of 
subjective facts (i.e., feelings) 
as objective facts only seems to 
be acceptable when it’s done by 
certain powerful people (read: 
conservatives and Republicans) 
to support and maintain their 
political interests. In cases 
where subjective facts ought 
to play a larger role in the 
discussion, such as in the 
case of sexual assault or when 
people of color, LGBTQ people, 
Muslims, etc. express feeling 
terrified at the reality of a 
Trump presidency, those same 
conservatives and Republicans 
mock the use of feelings and 
emotions in discussions.

What’s apparent from all 

this is that the fact/feeling 
distinction operates in lopsided 
ways. 
People 
of 
oppressed 

identities 
and 
survivors 
of 

sexual assault, among other 
people, are not allotted the 
same leeway to make arguments 
based on feelings, to have their 
feelings taken as facts, as 
personal realities and truths, 
as are their white, conservative 
counterparts. 
There 
is 
an 

exclusive group of people and 
movements that is allowed to 
use feelings as facts, and while 
“post-truth” 
is 
definitely 
a 

thing with legal and historic 
precedent, 
using 
feelings 

as facts is not accessible for 
everyone, even when it might 
be necessary and useful.

Selective post-truth precedent

Michael Mordarski can be reached 

at mmordars@umich.edu.

MICHAEL MORDARSKI | COLUMN

CLARISSA DONNELLEY-DEROVEN | COLUMN

I

n recent years it seems that 
we’ve seen the ideological 
gap in this country transform 

into more of an ideological chasm; 
liberals and conservatives have 
both retreated into 
their 
respective 

corners and appear 
ready to duke it out 
for 
the 
foreseeable 

future. Yet the mere 
presence 
of 
such 

a 
stark 
ideological 

division 
does 
not 

necessarily 
mean 

that either of the two 
major political parties 
are in a position to 
take any votes for 
granted, a lesson that Democrats 
were forced to learn the hard way 
during this election.

Many Democratic strategists 

simply assumed that the same 
coalition that propelled President 
Barack Obama to two terms in the 
White House would do the same 
for Hillary Clinton, but it’s clear 
now that this was not the case. As 
the votes rolled in on election night 
and Democratic strongholds such 
as Michigan, Pennsylvania and 
Wisconsin flipped red for the first 
time in years, many disheartened 
liberals were left scratching their 
heads and wondering how their 
support could have splintered in 
such a dramatic fashion.

If there is one lesson to be 

learned from these defections, it 
is that the party must do a better 
job of appealing to working-
class white voters going forward. 
While the Clinton campaign 
focused heavily on emphasizing 
Trump’s 
weaknesses 
and 
on 

promoting 
important 
social 

causes, the campaign lacked a 
strong economic message, which 
may have inevitably led to her 

downfall 
in 
the 
Midwestern 

states in which she faltered. The 
message of “Stronger Together” 
is certainly a lovely sentiment, 
but it seems to have done little 

to inspire blue-collar 
voters to go to the 
polls, as exit polls 
showed Donald Trump 
defeating 
Clinton 

by 30 points among 
whites with no college 
degree in Michigan, 
Wisconsin, Ohio and 
Pennsylvania.

It’s clear that for 

the party to succeed 
in the Rust Belt going 
forward, it will need to 

craft a strong economic message 
and dedicate a great deal of time 
and energy toward winning back 
many of the working-class white 
voters who decisively swung 
Republican this year. Strangely 
enough, the solution to this issue 
may in fact lie with the loser 
of the Democratic primary, 
Bernie Sanders.

Despite 
being 
defeated 
by 

Clinton in the primary, it’s 
clear that the populist policies 
of Sanders struck a chord in 
the Midwest. By attacking free 
trade proposals like the Trans-
Pacific Partnership and stressing 
the unfairness of the current 
economic system, Sanders was 
able to pull off surprise victories 
in states such as Michigan and 
Wisconsin. As a result, in the 
aftermath of the general election, 
many Democrats have been forced 
to confront the uncomfortable 
question of whether or not the 
results would have been the same 
had 
Sanders 
been 
victorious 

during the primaries.

While 
this 
election 
has 

certainly 
humbled 
me 
into 

realizing that nothing can ever 
truly be known with certainty, it 
does appear that Sanders would 
have been more successful among 
the demographics that Clinton 
struggled with throughout the 
course of the election. With this 
in mind, the Democratic Party 
may believe that realigning their 
platform with Sanders and the 
progressive wing of the party 
offers the best chance to succeed 
in future elections. Not only 
would this shift toward more 
progressive policies aid in their 
courting of working-class white 
voters, but it would also greatly 
aid the party in attracting young 
voters, one in 10 approximately of 
which voted to elect a third-party 
candidate this year.

The 
support 
that 
Sanders 

received 
from 
young 
voters 

throughout the primary season 
is certainly well-documented, but 
the raw numbers are absolutely 
astonishing, as a study found that 
as of June, he had received more 
votes from voters under the age of 
30 than both Trump and Clinton 
combined. The DNC is certainly 
aware of this phenomenon, as 
Clinton did, in fact, shift away 
from many of her centrist views 
and embrace more progressive 
policies throughout the course 
of the general election. As the 
party turns its attention to the 
next 
generation 
of 
potential 

Democratic 
voters, 
it 
seems 

plausible that they will begin to 
employ this strategy from the get-
go in future elections and truly 
embrace progressive politics.

Where do liberals go from here?

JEFF BROOKS | COLUMN

Read more online at 

michigandaily.com

Jeff Brooks can be reached at 

brooksjs@umich.edu.

Thin-skinned Trump

JEFF 

BROOKS

MICHAEL

MORDARSKI
JOE IOVINO | CONTACT JOE IOVINO AT JIOVINO@UMICH.EDU

CLARISSA
DONNELLY-

DEROVEN

It doesn’t matter 

if your beliefs 
are factually 
accurate so 

long as they are 
sincerely held. 

Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven can be 

reached at cedon@umich.edu.

CONTRIBUTE TO THE CONVERSATION

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