Trump and ROCEJ

Some time ago, I Made a Hilarious in Hindsight entry about a book written in 2005 where the Laughably Evil villain (a New Yorker summoning a monster from another dimension) boasts about becoming more powerful than Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg. To me, this comment felt funny due to how both men ended up running for president and Trump won. The trope was not making a good or bad statement about Trump becoming president, just noting that the comment felt funnier after he did (given how it ow felt like the villain was boasting about becoming more powerful than the president of the United States instead of just business tycoon). That comment was removed due to ROCEJ, a decision I disagreed with but ultimately deferred to due to the general guidelines about anything related to current politicians. Now that Trump has been defeated for re-election and his impeachment trial is over, I would like to ask if it would be ok to add that back.

If/When anyone responds to this comment could you also PM me, because I'm not sure if I'll be able to regularly check this forum, and it looks like there's a long time between posts.

Edited by Melinda on Feb 14th 2021 at 12:27:36 PM

~Melinda, part of the issue isn't that it's ROCEJ, but also that it doesn't really seem like it qualifies for Hilarious in Hindsight. Trump-related examples get deleted all the time, not as ROCEJ violations but as shoehorns.

Thank you. I consider it hilarious (or at least funnier) in hindsight and would appreciate a couple of additional opinions, but if other people don't think it qualifies as Hilarious in Hindsight then I'll accept that. The trope who deleted it did say that it was because of ROCEJ and not because it was shoehorned.

Well, try checking what this thread has to say.

Since Trump has been found not guilty, I feel this should be cut from his main article.

"After no election official found evidence of widespread fraud and dozens of judges determined his claims of victory to be baseless, Trump organized a rally of thousands of supporters outside the White House to protest the election's certification. Members of this rally marched to the Capitol and stormed the building, resulting in five deaths, including one Capitol police officer. Though Trump finally conceded after the certification, Democrats and several Republicans viewed the Capitol disturbance as an attempted insurrection incited by the sitting president."

Not so much that he was found not guilty as much as they didn't have the specific majority votes needed to convict him of guilt, but either way, I'm not sure if the January 6th incident needs to be discussed on his page. It's definitely infamous, but it hasn't really come up in media yet.

I've cut the entire section from the article. It goes into way more detail on politics than necessary - we don't need to copy Wikipedia. TV Tropes is about storytelling.

Sore Loser has a surprisingly long entry for Trump; it almost certainly needs to be edited (assuming that it is kept).

Removed all the contentious stuff related to the 2020 election, because it had turned into a wall of text. All we need to say is that he refused to concede.

From The Boys (2019): Homelander.

• Trumplica: Not in appearance but in personality/ideology; Homelander shares the "America First" mantra and partnered with Stormfront to rally people against non-Americans. In real life, Trump was also accused of pandering to white supremacists, a claim that Trump neither rejected or accepted. Homelander and Stormfront's "America First" ideology also spurs hate crimes and indirectly causes the murder of a store clerk because the killer believed he was a "super terrorist" just because of his race. Homelander also brags about never drinking alchohol, a claim that Trump also made. Finally, both Trump and Homelander are seen as petulant megalomaniacs who were spoiled and emotionally deprived during their childhood, let their ego outstrip their capabilities in their adulthood, and were known to be derogatory towards women.

And from Epic Rap Battles of History, a Harsher in Hindsight example.

• In Donald Trump vs Joe Biden, Trump makes several not-so-veiled threats to Biden and refers to the resistance against him as "a riot". Early in 2021, the Capitol building was stormed by Trump supporters, to worldwide horror and condemnation.

Yeah or nay?

Edited by Eagal on Mar 7th 2021 at 4:13:32 AM

I'd say nay to the first one, not because of ROCEJ but because Trump's ideology is not something specific to him, which is why the trope requires more references to his mannerisms and status. The second one...maybe? The riot did objectively happen, was objectively a Trump supporter thing, and was recognized as a riot. Is acknowledging it like this a problem?

"To worldwide horror and condemnation" might be going a bit too far.

I disagree. Look up the international reactions to the Capitol riot on Wikipedia. The rest of the world was horrified.

It does have an And That's Terrible vibe, though. "Stormed the Capitol" carries enough negative implications.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 7th 2021 at 10:36:04 AM

I don't see how characterizing the events adds to the example. If it is to be kept, should it not simply report that the events happened without commenting on how people felt about it?

Yeah everyone here is probably right, it doesn't need to be emphasized. Consensus seems to be to cut, so just cut.

The attack on the Capitol itself wasn't divisive. It was universally condemned by everyone on both sides of the aisle.

Here's an example from the Beam Me Up Scotty page that I added but somebody removed.

• Some people believe that Trump specifically called white supremacists "very fine people." This is actually an interpretation of his third statement on the United the Right rally: "...and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." Given that the Unite the Right rally was organized by two neo-Nazis, commentators after the fact extrapolated that Trump's wording meant there were "very fine" white supremacists on the "side" of the rally. Put succinctly, he was attempting to condemn both the Neo-Nazis and the more violent counter-protesters while defending the more peaceful, but to many, it came off as if he was only condemning the counter-protesters and praising the white supremacists.

My argument is that Trump said "very fine people on both sides", but it is widely remembered as him saying "white supremacists are very fine people", which wasn't exactly what he said. Does this qualify as an example?

I see it also quoted as "very fine people on both sides" with the acknowledgement that the context is still including white supremacists as one of the sides he's praising. So I don't think it's misquoted, and it's never directly quoted as "white supremacists are very fine people" in my experience, that's just a paraphrase of what he implied.

Edited by mightymewtron on Mar 26th 2021 at 7:46:15 AM

I'd keep it off on ROCEJ grounds. (Just because a side includes racist idiots doesn't mean it is entirely racist idiots.)

On South ParQ Vaccination Special, there's been periodic additions and deletions of mentions of part of the episode's criticisms of the media, CNN getting singled out in particular. Normally, criticizing the media or specific journalists or news channels would be flame bait. However, the episode already contains criticism of right-wingers, especially Trump and Qanon, which has to be kept since it is recitation of the criticisms held in the episode and necessary to trope the episode. While some of the examples attempted to be added (and subsequently deleted) of the media seems too specific in its explanation of "the media's bias" and too out-of-bounds of the scope of recapping the episode to belong on the page, its definitely true the episode attempts to criticize non-right-wing media to some extent. Would it be alright to re-add a trope example on this page of this episode's criticism of non-right-wing media, if it were made more general, including not specifically mentioning CNN or any individual journalists?

That page is kind of a mess in general for reasons unrelated to ROCEJ, but I do remember the reporter scenes being a legit Take That! at media hypocrisy. Rereading the script, it's hard to tell which reporter is really supposed to be in the wrong. The frustrated reporter has a bias against the QAnon kids (who are depicted as antagonistic) while supporting Cartman and company, while the level-headed reporter does defend them both, but the reporter also has some legit reasons to be frustrated. But the character model's been used for a villainous role under a different name. So I can't definitively remember whether the special was criticizing the media as too emotionally biased or too focused on a lack of bias.

One thing I can say for certain, though, is that CNN never comes up (this all takes place on South Park's local news station), so attaching this criticism to any specific news outlet does feel like a ROCEJ violation. It's about the media in general. I just can't pinpoint what the message was supposed to be. It's the most confusing bit of the episode for sure.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 4th 2021 at 6:29:35 AM

I think in that that particular part of the episode neither reporter was really supposed to be in the right or wrong. It kind of felt it was expressing some degree of empathy towards both sides, since, even if the Quties are being indoctrinated and clearly believing in something that seems to be provably false, they're still "fighting for their beliefs" in the same sense others were praised for before, making it possible to empathize with them, though not to a sympathetic degree. Thing is, even this might be seen as pro-right-wing from a right-winger's perspective simply on the grounds that a "both sides have a point" stance or a "one side is wrong, but even the wrong side can have a point" stance is closer to "fair" than the purely villainous stance others have (or, at least, Qanoners think others have) shown them as. On the other hand, for a left-winger, it might be perceived as an apologist stance for presenting a false equivalency.

Edited by Emreld3000 on Apr 4th 2021 at 5:21:45 AM

I am a little concerned about the sheer amount of political commentary on Memes.US Politics 2016 Election Onward.

From In the Heights

• Benny rapping about how if he won the lottery he'd go to business school, become successful and start golfing with Donald Trump as his caddy becomes harsh considering the amount of racism associated with Trump during his 2015-16 presidential campaign and following presidency. ^note Trump's handling of relief efforts for Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico, caused even Lin to snap on Twitter and tell the President that he's going straight to hell. Though it also doubles as a Moment of Awesome in hindsight, that Benny wants to become richer than Trump and bring him down a peg.

Yeah or nay?

Nay.