Yesterday, as news about the Wolff book rolled through the net, I had an accidentally well-timed piece on the complexities of talking about Trump’s age and his brain. I acknowledge that in fact age-related cognitive change might be an issue in a president (or other forms of cognitive change), but continue to believe that outside…
There’s a video of President Trump heading off his plane to his limo, and just wandering off down the runway, until someone turns him around to head back to the car … which was right in front of him. What’s Going On Here? pic.twitter.com/xC8ORMrblz — Yashar Ali (@yashar) July 4, 2017 How do we report…
So Comey said Trump is “crazy,” but before that George Will said Trump is “disabled” by Hubris. Will, of course, is the famous father of a man with Down syndrome, so this is particularly disappointing. One of my critiques of the mental health discourse is that by all accounts Trump has spent his life acting…
It strikes me that when Trump needs to criticize white people, he likes to quickly resort on ableism (as opposed to racism, and plus sexism when useful). Here’s his comment on Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense and recent critic of Trump: Donald Trump launched a series of fierce attacks against former Defense Secretary Robert…
Kit Mead wrote a new post late last week on ableism on the Left. The Left isn’t especially prone to ableism; rather, ableism is a society-wide phenomenon still in its early days of being discussed, understood, and countered through speech, action, and policy. We’re still having to prove ableism exists, that (in the words of…
I’m on vacation. Last week I wrote blog posts and a CNN essay arguing that the urge to characterize Donald Trump as “crazy” relies on stigma around mental illness. I was extremely shocked by the venom in the responses. I never expect to persuade everyone, but if I move the needle a bit and push people to…
Erik Loomis over at Lawyers, Guns, and Money recently emailed me this pdf of a 1975 article in which Garry Wills, the famous author, argued that George Wallace should be disqualified from running for president due to his “infirmity.” [Update: The great Rick Perlstein gave me the link to the Google News archive of the column,…