34 Comments

My problem with that video is that Vance set it up. He did that without thinking of what to say, without scouting in advance to make sure salespeople were willing to be videoed, and that shows arrogance. When I give a poetry reading, I practice because I am shy and awkward and while I used to think of this as my great affliction, now I realize it's not respectful to the audience to not try very hard to do better. Vance didn't try.

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It may've been arrogant but if so almost unbelievably stupid--is he that stupid? It seems more like genuine cluelessness, like when he apparently responded to a fist-bump with a handshake, like gripped someone's fist. Cluelessness doesn't make him a nice person but I can't help having a feeling for him.

About readings, yes, I know what you mean. I also prep and practice for readings and make an effort to give satisfaction. But that's a totally different thing. That's a very proscribed interaction and as a reader you know your role and what you want to convey. You've got a script! And the audience is usually going to be supportive. Its your space and if they have any manners at all they will respect that even if they don't like your work. These donut shop things, also parties, dinners, anything more conventionally social are a whole other ballgame. Some people are good at it and some are not. If you're not it doesn't mean you're an alien or a creep! Okay, Vance is, but not because he can't make small talk!

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His people set it up. And they are not the best people

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

It's possible for many things to be true at once, I think.

The lazy journalism that focuses on personalities in political contests has created circumstances has made it imperative for candidates to portray themselves as ordinary people, as if social ease had something to do with political intelligence and efficacy. One particularly enraging example: Remember when the press said that more people would like to have a beer with George Bush instead of Al Gore in 2000? Never mind that Bush is an alcoholic and knows it and that he subsequently ginned up a war that caused hundreds of thousand of deaths. I suppose I could feel sorry for JD Vance for being embroiled in that system, and walking into a trap of his own making. I'd rather go with schadenfreude.

As Margaret K. Diehl noted earlier, he jumped in of his own accord. I think that reflects the mediocre while male illusion that we're witty and charming and people genuinely like us, rather than the fact that it's a lot easier to smile and go about your business and not piss us off. He thinks all he has to do is show up, and he can "win." Nope.

Don't get me wrong: I do think Vance is authentic. He's an authentic bootlicking misogynist and racist. It's kind of the fundamental identity of MAGA. It's not like they're hiding it. What makes the schadenfreude sweetest of all is when someone won't play into it. I think that's what people are hoping for in the debates.

I haven't looked closely at Walz as a personality. What I can look at is the difference between the way things work here in Iowa, with our MAGA governor and nitwit legislature, and what's happened in Minnesota under his watch. He could come off as a blithering idiot and the record would still count for more.

The difference between Vance's social failure and yours (and by extension the rest of ours) is that you weren't trying to charm someone whose life you were, at the same time, trying to make worse. If I were a woman of color working in retail, I'd spit in his cruller, if I thought I'd get away with it. Failing that, I'd hope I could refuse to engage.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9Author

"He thinks all he has to do is show up, and he can "win."

I guess this is possible? Its just so far away from what I generally feel that its hard for me to imagine a person feeling this way while walking into any unknown situation, particularly if you are a controversial person who a lot of people don't like.

"I'd hope I could refuse to engage."

The lady behind the counter did! You can see it in the second video. She was actually much more grounded than he was in the situation and in that way stronger, though in a very understated way.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

As a boy, I was socialized to have that attitude, or at least act like I did. I think it’s pretty general. Not that anyone really feels it, you understand. It’s all over Trump’s self-presentation, as when he claims to know about nuclear stuff because his relative taught at MIT.

They do this poll from time to time, and it always cracks me up: https://www.cnn.com/travel/how-easy-is-it-to-land-a-passenger-plane/index.html

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

lol! Here’s to awkward people everywhere! We can’t come up with small talk but we do care! We really do. You should hear what we come up with to say to you an hour later. When we’re alone.

And yeah, Vance is terrifying, even in a donut shop. What he has to say about women, and our place in the world? Good-bye, JD.

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Sep 9·edited Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

Vance has signed on to be VP to a man who has sexually assaulted women (and bragged about it!), openly mocks people with disabilities, compares immigrants to vermin and more. Because of Vance's embrace of a man who feels all but American white men are worthy of being demeaned and ridiculed, I feel little sympathy for Vance. He is being fed some of his own medicine. Trump and Vance are men who want people to fit into tiny boxes (boxes they have designed and that uniquely benefit them) and so it is somewhat delicious to see Vance floundering awkwardly outside his own box - that of a cool, smart, anti-urbane hyper-masculine American man.

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I'd feel sorry for him if he wasn't such a hardened troll. He reminds me of the kid who got made fun of in school, came from an unstable home life, got famous quick and now he's in way over his head. He's an unfortunate product of American culture. But he has dangerous opinions and should not have access to power.

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I totally agree.

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Sep 10Liked by Mary Gaitskill

I can totally relate to feeling and being awkward as you did at that supermarket counter, or as JD Vance. What disturbs me about that video is that a woman who worked there said very clearly that she did not want to be filmed. And nevertheless, this video of her is all over hell and gone.

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I have to disagree on basically everything here.

I think since Trump came down the escalator, we have had to hug the non-normies and force the alleged normies to walk a walk of shame.

Because, you know, Harvey Weinstein and 1619 and Emmett Till and the Sabine Women and Matthew Shepard and yadda yadda yadda.

I never remotely, not in a million years, would have considered myself "normative" until around 2016. But since then, my tribe has been told to sit down and shut up at every opportunity. I don't want to do that.

My options are to leave America--quite possible--or pray Christ the orange man and the childless cat lady persecutor restore normie privilege in these United States. Submission to the Coconut and Tim is not an option.

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

“Normie privilege” sounds like every fascist state I can think of, with the rulers deciding who are the normies. Ugh. Mary, I can’t believe you “liked” this.

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I don't think he wants "normie privilege;" note he's putting "orange man" and "cat lady" on the same footing. Note also that he seems to like non-normies being hugged. I liked that he expressed his opinion civilly and also even if I don't like what appear to be his politics I vibe with almost anyone who feels like they've been shut out of "normative" which I think is what he's saying. Its a bad feeling.

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No, he means JD Vance, the “childless cat lady persecutor,” he doesn’t mean, Kamala of the Prosecutor. Am I right, Matthew?

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Correct. And Mary, thanks for the like.

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“Submission to the coconut and Tim?” But okay, I take you at your word.

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Wait. What? I think what I said is PERFECTLY CLEAR. Orange man yes, coconut no. Got it?

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I love this piece but I still despise Vance and all the other Ayn Rand acolytes!

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I do too!

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They all want to be someone like John Galt, and since that’s not possible, they can claim Objectivism, pretending that Rand’s theory was economically sound. I let go of wanting to be a world-changing capitalist in the 11th grade, but it sure was nice for a while to imagine myself as Dagny Taggart! Well, shucks to that, and until these men began to gain power, I hadn’t thought about Ayn Rand in a very long time.

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

I pretty much agree with you. Vance is a full-on horror in so many ways, but I have to wonder if he knew what he was getting himself into. He is very much in over his head with this, and of course, his awkwardness seems to be what he's being attacked for more than anything else (such as his positions or the actual threats he poses). Welcome to politics, I guess.

Related, I have a friend who wrote a piece about the word "weird", and how she, one of the "proudly weird," wants it back. (For what it's worth, I've always thought of myself as a weirdo too.) I told her she'd have to wait until after the election because we have to beat these guys even if we're not playing fair (of course, they don't play fair). And we're not playing fair. Similar with the age issue - we have to use it with Trump just like the media did with Biden, but ageism will be in ascendant after the election because of it. It may be hard to get it back in the bottle.

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"It may be hard to get it back in the bottle."

This is what I feel--your post says it perfectly, thanks.

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Sep 10Liked by Mary Gaitskill

Toothpaste. Tube. Oh dear.

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Sep 10Liked by Mary Gaitskill

As a non-American I can't help but see that Vance and Walz appear to be two versions of the same conservative thing.

The elephant in the room is, yet again, class and Vance is the hostile aristocratic conservative who knows nothing of the lives of working people, basically abhors them entirely. He is someone who more than likely wishes they could be replaced by machines.

Walz's conservatism, the vulgar version, so to speak, has little time for the actual humanity of people working under the conditions of minimum wage work, preferring the roadshow of buddy togetherness. The fact that it takes 86 hours a week of minimum wage work to afford a one-bedroom apartment is just not a subject of chit chat that he's ever going to bring up.

Something like 11% of the US working class is unionized. Of the 11% 6% are in government unions that banned the right to strike.

I am feeling very sorry for American members of the working class.

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Interesting, thanks for your perspective.

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

I’m really glad you wrote this. As you imply, the fact that Vance and Trump are awkward and/or weird is not the problem. I feel similarly upset when people call Trump fat or orange. What does that have to do with the real danger he poses? His appearance is not the problem, and it feels petty, bullying, and misguided (and MAGA) to go there. I understand the impulse to call them weird, which is maybe something like, “We’re not weird; you’re weird!” But that’s a Trump move: “I’m not threatening democracy; you’re threatening democracy!” If we want diversity and inclusion, if that’s what Harris and Walz are fighting for (and they are), then it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to call anyone weird and abnormal, especially not with this kind of glee. It makes everyone more guarded and less interesting. I love weird and abnormal. If I didn’t, I don’t think I’d be reading this particular substack.

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Honestly at first I actually liked it that they got their weapons turned on them--it was such a novelty! People like Vance position themselves as arbiters of normal so it feel like justice--to a point. Past that point its just kind of gross and eventually ineffective.

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Sep 9Liked by Mary Gaitskill

I did like it when Obama alluded to Trump's penis size.

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Sometimes you just can't help it...

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Sep 15Liked by Mary Gaitskill

Maybe this isn’t the same thing, but while I loathe Donald Trump, I’m often troubled when people call him “Captain Bonespurs” and talk about how he didn’t go to Viet Nam and his dad helped him get out of it. Thousands (millions?) of men didn’t go to Viet Nam; they got out of it however they could and yes, they were mostly “privileged” but besides not wanting to die, they didn’t want to kill Vietnamese people.

In general, I wish people would stick to the facts when criticizing others and drop the ad hominem attacks.

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Oh, this just about broke my heart; not for Vance, who has no soul, but for awkward and weird people (like you and me) the world over. I could so relate.

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Thank you. There are more of us than is known!

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I enjoy your posts, and will continue to be a paid subscriber, but almost barfed when you said you're voting for Kamala. It doesn't surprise me, but I never thought about it until you mentioned it. Hey, the debate is less than five hours away. Be sure to watch it. Another Substack author I pay for, Walter Kirn, predicts it will be a "debacle" for Harris, but we'll have to wait and see.

If I ever meet you or talk directly to you, I'll have to try to talk some sense into you about world politics. But simply put: It's not about whether a leader is good with small talk (Vance isn't), or whether a leader is warm, cuddly, and agreeable (Trump isn't). It's whether they are more likely to keep us out of Nuclear WWIII. Kamala is just a clueless puppet of the Neocon establishment that just wants to continue the Ukraine and Israel wars . . . probably until the end of humanity . . . could be soon.

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