There is an image is going around today, & damn, it’s appealing. It sums up all the class of Obama, all the crass of Trump.
It’s also not quite accurate. Whomever made the image condensed quite a lot of Trump’s words to make him sound even more buffoonish by taking the extreme eye-roll bits and shoving them together; it’s indicated by the ellipses, but it’s a lot of text and tiny ellipses, and to shove everything together – well. It’s problematic.
Is it the truth? Kind of. Trump did say those things. But I imagine I could probably creatively edit Obama’s speeches to sound much more vacuous and self-important; imagine how the image would change if this text, from the same National Prayer Breakfast, was used:
Giving all praise and honor to God for bringing us together here this morning. Motorcading up here at the heart of D.C.’s rush hour, I suspect that not all the commuters were blessing me as they waited to get to work. But it’s for a good cause, haha! A National Prayer Brunch doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Obviously it’s not the same degree of eye-roll – but I also like Obama. I imagine for folks who didn’t, the idea of the president laughing about making people late to work so he could have breakfast wasn’t funny at all.
Mind, I’m not defending Trump – his speech was asinine and juvenile, full of his favorite topics: himself and revenge. It would be easy to make graphics side-by-siding the graceful humility of Obama with the vulgar vanity of Trump. But in doing so, we should be honest in our depictions: editing Trump to make him sound worse isn’t necessary, is dishonest, and it muddies the waters of effectiveness. He’s a horrible person as is, and needs no help proving it.