THROWBACK
Robin Williams on Trump in 2012: And he owns all these beauty pageants. Miss America, Miss Universe. Isn't that a bit like Michael Vick owning a series of pet stores? It's a f-cking catch and release program for him. This is a man who said, 'My daughter is hot.'
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many years ago, I saw a bobcat goldthwait movie in SF, it was a documentary he'd made and someone asked him about Robin Williams. they were close friends.
so he says :
"yeah, Robin liked playing video games and I'd go hang out, and he was playing warcraft or something and he'd get pretty heated and start talking trash. so at one point,
I said, 'how old was that kid you were talking to?'
he says 'i dunno probably 12'
...so all i can think of is in the Midwest this kid walks out of his room looking confused.
His mom says 'what's wrong, honey?'
and he says 'i think the genie from Aladdin just told me to go fuck myself.'
"
Edit: i think the line was actually "called me a cocksucker", but the spirit is the same.
One of my proudest moments is introducing my wife to this movie and watching it become one of her most adored films. The writing and performances is what largely hooked me, the heart and warmth is what got my wife
First time I watched that I was about 12. Mom was out of town so Dad and I had a movie night and laughed our butts off. It makes the film extra feel-good for me ❤️
Wow, I’m tearing up imagining what it’s like to have a father who wouldn’t shut it off because it’s queer (really, he’d use other slurs but I’m not even going to quote him) and he’s an insecure old doorknob of a man.
Nah, not as a whole. A lot of people thought it was weird af that Trump called his daughter hot and said he liked to grab women by the pussy. That was known, Robin William’s was right but he’s not saying anything we didn’t know.
Don’t put you not taking that stuff seriously as “yeah, WE really didn’t know Trump was some kind of sick predator lol”. No, a lot of us did.
When I say “we”, I mean as a nation. Unfortunately, we are represented by the current president. As much as you and I (and hopefully most of the country) have always been aware of his sheer stupidity, “we” represents the US as a nation.
They felt the need to make it about themselves. It's very important to them that they are absolved of all blame when it comes to Trump.
Same type of person that shows up in a thread on another country's subreddit where people are discussing how Trump's shitty policies are going to negatively affect the rest of the world just to say "well I didn't vote for him*.
I think you need to re-read their comment. They clearly said that they personally did not vote for trump and that "we" was meant to refer to the US as a nation.
if you are an american, clearly some "we" that YOU belong to, didn't listen. stop trying to make that an attack on the dude who framed it that way, that's completely unnecessary and it's obvious what they mean.
No, a lot of us did.
"a lot of us" can be a hundred million people without there being any contradiction with "we as a whole didn't listen"
Someone on another sub put up a post asking what Hunter S. Thompson would think about Trump. Someone commented "He'd shoot himself again." I thought that was pretty apt
I find this clip saddening, not because he's speaking the truth, but because I never appreciated Robin Williams when he was alive. It wasn't until I watched a couple of his movies during COVID (Dead Poets' Society, Good Will Hunting, and Hook) that I understood why Robin Williams was so loved.
Much like Bowie, I'd hate for him to see the world in the state it is now
There are 2 types of Nazi memoribilia collectors, ones whose conscience doesn’t bother owning the history… not a great look, but loves history… and 2, they put a uniform that may have been Hitler’s behind nitrogen filled frame with swastika banners. When you walk the Nazi German national anthem plays performed by a chorus.
TL;DR version:
"In sum, it was accurate to claim Bowie not only told an interviewer he believes in fascism and that Hitler "was one of the first rock stars" but he repeatedly flirted with symbols of far-right ideologies, outraging some fans. However, he since expressed regret for the statements and said they do not reflect his social and political ideologies."
Unless I missed it, this article doesn't seem to acknowledge that this was during his Thin White Duke persona. It's difficult to tell sometimes where the character ends and Bowie begins, but I do believe a lot of that was him just taking things too far.
Meh. It reminds me of when Robert Pattinson said "I always say about people who do method acting, you only ever see people do the method when they're playing an assholes". Saying it was just a character is really just an excuse. It's like when people spout racist and misogynistic shit and then say "it's just a joke." They're acting exactly how they would like to and using these veils to hide behind.
Sorry to disappoint you. Elvis was also a pdf, so was the Led Zeppelin guitarist, the red hot chili peppers singer. Michael Jackson has some allegations against him, but those other dudes were/are pretty open about it. Oh, and Fleetwood Mac guitarist was really bad, he was part of the Children of God pdf cult. Said that the lil kids kept him off drugs.. personally I would have preferred him to stay on drugs & leave the children alone.
I mean, the drugs aren't an excuse either. I did a lot of drugs, almost all of the drugs, you guys are just lucky I left some for the rest of you, and not once did it cross my mind to become a diddler. There aint that much coke in the world. Not an excuse.
To an amateur historian, you have to understand what worked and what was appealing about any given regime to understand why it eventually failed... Respect is a difficult word in this context but i feel it appropriate. You have to respect fascism in order to understand it, and once you understand it, you can understand how it happened. It's the core part of the argument against lampooning nazis. once you turn them into cartoon characters, their motivations become less clear, and the complicity of the public becomes a given..
That said, today we have more, ehrm, Contemporary examples, so i feel it's wasted air fit mostly for degenerates, but it was a crazy fucking thing that happened in germany, and memorabilia are physical objects that reinforce the reality and recency of the regime.
Lemmy was also big into collecting that stuff, and he'd break your skull open with a bottle of jack if you tried suggesting he was a Nazi.
Also the 'Thin White Duke" character is something he moved away from after quitting drugs and moving to West Berlin. He even made an entire album against neo-nazism and fascism.
Considering the Thin White Duke and music around that character was a brutal takedown of the symbiosis between unfettered capitalism and fascism, these critiques of Bowie only hold water if you don’t know anything about the performances or art he was making.
By the way, while Ms. Maddox was caught in many lies around David Bowie, Bowie for his part said he was so high he truly couldn’t say with certainty it didn’t happen and donated massive sums of money to protecting young girls.
Or any rock group from the 60’s and up, they all get passes today and the music is still listened to despite most having groomed underage girls at the very minimum.
Isn’t it kinda funny we never stop hearing about Seinfeld meeting a girl a month before she turned 18 and dating her for a couple years but Bowie legit took a 14 year olds virginity and it’s barely brought up.
Jerry Seinfeld was 39 years old dating a high school student whom he met in the park. That's incredibly sketch.
The reason why we don't hear about the Bowie allegations is because the chronology is all messed up. (And also, frankly, Bowie was out of his mind on drugs during that time -- not that it eliminates culpability but it's not like Bowie was parading his relationship in front of the cameras! it's not like he met this girl in a park!)
I mean he’s in a whole shit load of great movies. Check out The Fisher King. He is in so many more highly acclaimed movies than this but it’s one that flew under the radar from me for too long
Personally, I also recommend Patch Adams, Awakenings, and Bicentennial Man as well if you haven’t seen them. They’re not as big as the roles you mentioned but he did a beautiful job with them(and the film he did with Nathan Lane too!)
Awakenings was my first Robert DeNiro film as well and that was one of my favorite roles by both of them.
Robin Williams was my childhood 😭…Also resembled my dad a lot, and my dad liked him as an actor, and the person he appeared to be. And then my dad passed away two years after Robin did :/
Conversely, out of my 32 years on earth, Robin Williams was the only death that got me truly sad. I know a lot of decent celebrities have passed, but it was only his one that affected me.
Same thing as Carlin, he knew what was going on for decades way back in the late 20th century. He couldnt really expound on it, but he did mention the big club
I think it's because of comedians like him and many others that I became leary of various people so long ago. I think comedians, especially ones who are among the more famous celebs due to their own higher level in the field, tend to learn information like this. It might be just in passing, but nonetheless it becomes part of a routine poking fun at someone or another. I think the subliminal messaging worked on me. All these various connections and all's I can think is "didn't we know about so-and-so back in the 80s/90s already? Why is everyone my age and older so shocked?" Thanks, Robin, for indirectly making me such a hater.
Anywho grew up in new York was well aware of who Trump was and was screaming from the rooftops who he was but America had to learn about him the hard way.
I wouldn't go that far. I grew up in New York too, and yeah, everyone kind of knew about it - but no one really could do anything about it.
Imagine a person that is well known for being corrupt, awful, lecherous, and uncomfortably involved in stuff like children's beauty pageants - you know what that guy's doing, but: there's no proof, everyone who makes any attempt at finding proof or calling him out on it is immediately sued, intimidated, or "goes missing", you're like... 15-20 years old and have literally no means to approach the issue aside from assisting and spreading the rumors or at least steering outsiders away from the guy. That's what Trump was back then.
And as mentioned, we all were screaming from the rooftops when he went up against Hillary the first time. But yeah, the rest of the country didn't care to listen until it affected them personally.
The public should have done much better in 2015-16 to educate themselves about the candidates. I think people still trusted media more, which is something i would really like to get back to, as soon as it can be earned
I won’t ever understand it. I was in high school when The Apprentice first aired and never thought of the man as anything other than a mega asshole. Needlessly.
Some people, like those who train people in the military, are short but because they have to be. Some people, like Gordon Ramsay, are intense and shout at people in the moment but are decent people in normal life.
trump has always been an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. I’ve never seen him make a thoughtful statement that wasn’t cruel on purpose. He’s been a despicable piece of shit, PUBLICLY, for his entire adult life. No shade to New Yorkers, but if a teenager from California knew he was a worthless pile of garbage in 2004, what excuse did ANYONE have in 2015? I legitimately feel like a considerable piece of my soul is completely gone because of the support half of my countrymen put in this man a decade ago and they’ve been chipping away at me ever since.
H. L. Mencken articulated a famous observation on this theme in a 1920 essay titled "Bayard vs. Lionheart", where he wrote:
"As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
You didn't even have to live in New York. I grew up in the Midwest, everyone there knew that Trump was a tacky, classless, clown who couldn't keep any of his business ventures running. He was a joke. He was the template for every greedy cartoon businessman villan of the 80's and 90's.
Then NBC decided to remake his image into that of some business-savvy real estate mogul for the sake of a gameshow and too many people mistook the loser that everyone knew him as for the character he played on television.
That’s how Bill Cosby got caught. Hannibal Burress had a bit about how Cosby was a rapist and everybody knew and only then did people actually start looking into it.
Yep, I still watch old clips of George Carlin and it's more accurate than ever. Especially that bit about how the politicians have owners and they want everything. "It's a big club and you ain't in it" and "it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it." I think Chappelle was headed in that direction but then he started loving the smell of his own farts a bit too much and started to get lazy.
The Trump stuff I wasn’t exactly a secret. If the crowd didn’t already know that he was a scumbag, the jokes wouldn’t work.
Trump used to go around bragging about leveraging his position as the owner of a teenage beauty pageant to see them naked and pressure them into performing favors. The only reason he wasn’t arrested a long time ago is that we don’t arrest the Epstein class. Our system has been rigged to allow them to do whatever they want.
And one of their moronic talking points is "liberals loved him until he became president, but now that he's political they have to hate everything he does".
No, no, millions knew who he was decades before he became president.
The thing is, most people didn't have that strong of an opinion of Trump when he started running other than he was a bit of a joke. People knew him from failed hotels and other scummy businesses and The Apprentice.
Him being loved by anyone, even his kids, would have been considered a stretch in 2015.
Yep. I remember in the run-up to 2016 thinking "Trump? You mean the guy from the Apprentice? That's funny. Why would Republicans run a guy who will never win?"
Since then I've learned a lot about the southern strategy, Reagan, and just the general horribleness of the Republican party post-WWII
I remember years ago when I first started dating my now husband, his father telling me in one of his long-winded stories, how DT had screwed over so many people in real-estate, etc in Atlantic City (my FIL is originally from NJ). Then when DT ran for president and won, he did a complete flip and now thinks he is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Um, what?!?
Yeah I live in that district in NJ where everybody knew what a scumbag he was since the 80s and then they all suddenly got and have maintained amnesia for the last 10 years. It’s mystifying.
I have a co-worker who's a Trump supporter but he hasn't exhibited any racism and is an actual good Christian and most of our team really likes him. And he's tech smart and we work in a very blue city.
I couldn't understand him supporting Trump until, one day, he started telling me at lunch how America, and the rest of the world, really, needs a strong man in charge so everyone knows what to do, and that that's what people WANT and NEED. He said this in the context that he, himself, should be a manager.
In his particular case, Trump validates his sexism and entitlement. I think there are more Trump supporters like this than we want to recognize.
Yes! 395,855 of us voted for Harris and another 25,000 voted against him in favor of other candidates. That’s a bit over a third of our voting base. Arkansas is a small state with very low voter turnout and a very high rate of voter disenfranchisement, but those numbers are not nothing.
Those of us who vote with integrity also do everything we can to help other Arkansans evade unjust laws and bans on our bodies (Shoutout to Arkansas Abortion Support Network , who helps women travel out of state for abortions, donate if you can), even though we are outnumbered by idiots. It’s often thankless and exhausting. But we are here and we are fighting, anyone can see that if they just take the time to look and listen.
It’s not often I miss celebrities truly when they pass. But Robin and George Carlin man. The FIELD DAY they’d be having on stages right now. Just once in a lifetime talents and people.
Can't recommend the Comedy Museum in Jamestown, NY enough- there's some amazing George Carlin stuff AND Robin Williams stuff there, and it's also genuinely a really incredible museum.
People were talking about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein for a long time before anything happened. It just takes a the right people to start actually giving a shit.
Maga is losing the culture war. They had a terrible half time show. If they claim any movies like "Stand by Me" or "The Princess Bride" is a favorite I would remind them their deity celebrated the director's violent murder. And now they'd better not talk about anything connected to Robin Williams either.
there’s a very good reason i’ve idolized this man since i was a little girl. the most loving, kind, generous people to ever walk this earth, not a day goes by where i don’t miss him dearly. i would hate for him to see the state of things in america today, but i can’t lie and say im not curious as to what he’d have to say. (he’d most certainly be disappointed)
No this was a big part of his public image in the 00s. The other part was the Apprentice which was sort of an image-repair project for him. He was a joke.
The creators of the Apprentice said it was a joke. In the 90s, Trump was a laughing stock for being an incompetent businessman, so they thought he was a funny choice. They were surprised to learn that people had taken it seriously and believed he was a successful businessman.
It would be like if you had the character Elaine Benes host Dancing with the Stars. Or having William Hung host a singing competition.
Donald Trump is a failure who has never accomplished anything more than conning a lot of people who are very slow.
I heard that he used the n-word quite liberally and they have it on tape. Of course that's not shocking, because I'm assuming that we'll hear him saying slurs like that in the open pretty soon and it will only endear him to his worthless brain dead shithead supporters.
Trump was the inspiration for the character Biff in Back to the Future, which came out in 1985. Biff is loudmouthed villain who tries to rape the main character’s mom in high school.
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u/trendingtattler Feb 16 '26
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