Earlier this year, as the US journalist Michael Wolff was angrily defending his chart-busting exposé Fire and Fury against allegations that it was thinly sourced and inaccurate – allegations, it should be pointed out, that flowed principally from its apricot-coloured subject – a passage purporting to be an extract from the book was published and widely shared on Twitter. Originating from an account called @pixelatedboat, this ‘shocking insight into Trump’s mind’ (as the tweeter described it) read as follows:
On his first night in the White House, President Trump complained that the TV in his bedroom was broken, because it didn’t have ‘the gorilla channel’. Trump seemed to be under the impression that a TV channel existed that screened nothing but gorilla-based content, 24 hours a day.
To appease Trump, White House staff compiled a number of gorilla documentaries into a makeshift gorilla channel, broadcast into Trump’s bedroom from a hastily constructed transmission tower on the South Lawn. However, Trump was unhappy with the channel they had created, moaning that it was ‘boring’ because ‘the gorillas aren’t fighting’.
Staff edited out all the parts of the documentaries where gorillas weren’t hitting each other, and at last the president was satisfied. ‘On some days he’ll watch the gorilla channel for 17 hours straight,’ an insider told me. ‘He kneels in front of the TV, with his face about four inches from the screen, and says encouraging things to the gorillas, like “the way you hit that other gorilla was good”. I think he thinks the gorillas can hear him.’
As most of @pixelatedboat’s followers would have recognised immediately, the ‘shocking’ character of these revelations was equivalent to a handshake buzzer. The tweet was a joke. And yet, as it spread throughout the Twittersphere, it became clear that many had taken the excerpt as genuine, including some journalists who should have known better. Sky News’ Samantha Maiden was one such, tweeting, ‘The Trump book says the US President watches gorilla docos for hours & crawls around on the floor acting out gorilla stuff.’ (That tweet has since been deleted.) Another was Eric Garland, a strategic intelligence analyst with over 170,000 followers and a fondness for the caps lock key: ‘THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF MADE A MAKESHIFT GORILLA CHANNEL FOR TRUMP TO WATCH AS MUCH AS 17 TIMES A DAY.’ Commenting on his original tweet, @pixelatedboat sounded exasperated: ‘tfw you parody a guy making up shit about Trump but people believe it so you become part of the problem.’ [More here.]
“It would recognise that rightwing populism is an illiberal but democratic response to an increasingly undemocratic liberalism, and that doubling-down on your claim to have the experts on your side is a mistake, if that is all you’re going to do.”
Amazing quote, I feel like everyone following US politics should read this. It sums up a feeling I have had but haven’t been able to put into words neatly.
Really good article.
A major problem we also currently have is how we define experts. Nassim Taleb has done a lot of writing on this topic. Under his categorisation someone like Tom Nichols is not actually an expert, but an “Idiot Yet Intellectual.”
What’s a IYI according to Taleb?
“Intellectual Yet Idiot: semi-erudite bureaucrat who thinks he is an erudite; pathologizes others for doing things he doesn’t understand not realizing it is his understanding that may be limited; imparts normative ideas to others: thinks people should act according to their best interests *and* he knows their interests, particularly if they are uneducated “red necks” or English non-crisp-vowel class.”
I agree strongly with Taleb. Tom Nichols and many like him who oppose Trump are experts within Academia, but when it comes to commenting on the real world or doing things in the real world, they are no better than the common man.
There needs to be better more accessible smell tests for those who claim to be experts. Also if you are an expert and you earn your wage from foreign/interest group funded Think Tanks, you’re expert opinions are no doubt at risk of compromise.
Many thanks for the comment Jack. Shamefully I still haven’t read any Taleb, apart from a few pages of Skin in the Game. ‘Idiot yet intellectual’: he doesn’t pull his punches, does he? 🙂
No worries, really enjoyed the article. I highly recommend Skin in the Game by Taleb.
He certainly doesn’t, he’s got some quite savage polemics within ‘Skin in the Game.’ The man doesn’t miss an opportunity to fire off a broadside at New Atheism or the Davos crowd 😀