Trump owes his unique genius to Gilbert and Sullivan

Trump owes his unique genius to Gilbert and Sullivan

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norman lebrecht

July 17, 2018

This topical commentary is going through the roof.

Comments

  • Pianofortissimo says:

    Sketches like this became extremely boring lately. Reality is much more entertaining – nothing can be better than the real thing.

    • Caravaggio says:

      Correct. Nothing beats reality. Reality nowadays is mighty surreal to say the least. And that applies to both right and left. There is no center which means there is no safety net. Unless people in the USA come out in droves out of the woodwork and exercise their right to vote. If so, we shall see if the democratic system is truly designed as advertised.

      • Sharon says:

        The issue is not voting but the hundreds of millions of private dollars it takes to run election campaigns in the United States

      • Tamino says:

        ‘The right to vote’ becomes a dystopian nightmare, if you have an electorate that is increasingly less educated, more opinionated, and less shameful to act according to their lack of education and level of ignorance, meaning they should abstain having opinions, if it is not an educated one.
        Democracy only works, if people understand the issues and can make competent decisions. Not the case for the majority, and it’s only getting worse.

    • Stuart says:

      It’s a funny and clever parody use of the song from Pirates. Very much in keeping with the message of the original. Long tradition with this song – Tom Lehrer’s being a favorite. An example showing that there are a lot of people focusing all of their hate and anger on Trump, not undeservedly from their perspective, but it is all in the absence of any positive vision of what they would aspire to or achieve if they were in the lead. If only the energy that goes into the hate in this polarized world would be channeled into solving everyday peoples’ problems, improving education, increasing job opportunities in a world threatened by AI and technology, reducing poverty and need, and developing an economy that would support universal healthcare, so much could get done if only legislators legislated rather than spending all of their time scoring points. But I digress, and now am far away from the subject of this blog and from G&S. Back to music…As Gilbert wrote “The House of Peers, throughout the war, did nothing in particular, and did it very well.”

  • anon says:

    Brexiteers are so gung ho about Brexit that they are willing to see their own Prime Minister debased by the American president, openly, public, on British soil itself, in her very face.

    What will it take for the British right to abandon Trump? If Trump took a shit in front of the Queen at Buckingham Palace, then wiped his ass with the British flag? That’s pretty much how he regards Britain anyway.

    “Sue EU”. Fucking genius indeed.

    • Steven says:

      Your own vulgarity rivals Trump’s. I am not aware that the British right particularly likes Trump. I think most of the nation is in agreement that he is a rude, vile, unlettered oaf. Though some of us don’t much care for the anti-Trump protests, either, finding them similarly coarse

      • Hanna Nahan says:

        How charming it must be to have the comfort and security to avoid things which are ‘coarse’. The polite and respectful methods of challenging nascent fascism always seem to bring such convincing results, don’t they…

        • Mike Schachter says:

          And your solution is?

          • Gareth Jones says:

            As Woody Allen once said: ‘Baseball bats.’ Much better than biting satire when it comes to fascists

        • Sue says:

          Well, it depends on whether you’re talking about ‘coarse’ or ‘violent’. I think the latter is how revolution has largely been achieved achieved – the former is merely evidence of a debased society which has little self-regard.

  • Jonathan Sutherland says:

    In G&S parlance, perhaps Donald J Trump is really just ‘the very model of a modern major miscreant?’

  • Chipper says:

    As a fan of G&S and as someone who thinks Donald Trump is one of the worst things ever to happen to America, I love this video. I almost fell off my chair laughing. Besides being witty, the video provides some much needed comic relief.

  • chidino says:

    Thank you very much for posting this. I enjoyed it a great deal.

  • Nicholas Clapton says:

    It’s a brilliant parody, sending up one of the worst leaders of any country ever (think about that). I would love to know how much longer Americans think the “democratic structures” that pertain in their country will restrain his madness? The parody is witty and coarse. I note that that pro-Trump criticism of “snowflakes”, liberals”, and the like only ever partakes of the latter.

  • PJA says:

    It would be so funny, if it weren’t reflective of real events; but the reality is now so extraordinary and so shocking that we should weep not laugh.

  • Thomas "Tom" Lipton says:

    Randy’s parodies are always on the mark and this one is especially wonderful. Best us of the “Pirates” patter song since Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements.”

  • Sylvia Ashby says:

    Wanted to share on Facebook but no way of doing so !

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