Stephen Colbert trumps Trump’s daily propaganda briefings with Elbow-Tron 5700
[SPOILER ALERT for a nearly 50-year-old movie]
As fans of Mike Nichols’ fine 1971 comedy-drama of American male inadequacy Carnal Knowledge know, Jack Nicholson’s lothario co-lead winds up an aging, bitter, impotent woman-hater who can only achieve tumescence at the hands and attentions of obliging sex worker Rita Moreno, who coaxes his self-esteem to attention by showering him with copious praise of his towering manliness. As those watching the news this week know, Donald Trump apparently demands not one, but two strategically supplied folders throughout the day (called his “propaganda documents” by aides behind his back) bulging with nothing but ego-stroking pro-Trump tweets and laudatory news stories from state media organ Fox News. As Stephen Colbert put it in Friday’s Late Show monologue, even that twice-daily fluffing often isn’t enough to do the trick, as aides are admonished, “It needs to be more fucking positive!” by the person who is, god help us, the president. As Colbert explains to Trump, propaganda is traditionally a tool to make the populace love the leader, not to convince the leader to love himself.