Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
A few days ago many commentators (and Chelsea Clinton) pointed out the irony of Melania Trump’s announcement that if her husband became president she would, as First Lady, make anti-bullying a priority.
Now that Trump has won the election, more ironies have emerged.
1. Trump’s victory has been described as a populist revolt. Yet Clinton won a majority of the popular vote.
2. Just as the man who vowed to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. barged toward his surprise victory, U.S. cosmetics company CoverGirl named its first hijab-wearing spokesmodel, 24-year-old Coloradan Nura Afia.
3. In an election cycle that put Republicans on the verge of controlling every branch of the federal government, traditionally left-wing causes advanced in a number of states. Voters in California, Massachusetts, and several other states opted to legalize the recreational or medical use of marijuana. Voters in Colorado added their state to the five that already permit assisted suicide. Residents of Arizona, Colorado, and Maine all voted for a rise in the minimum wage. And at least three states moved to expand background checks for purchases of firearms and ammunition.
4. A majority of white women voted for the man who believes, as Suzanne Moore writes in The Guardian and as evidenced by his countless misogynistic statements during the campaign, that “[w]omen function to service him, as trophies, possessions.” In gaining so many of their votes, he made good on that claim.
5. As we might have gleaned from the bitter split in the Democratic primary caused by the Bernie Sanders phenomenon, Hillary Clinton, politically speaking, wasn’t the right candidate for the Dems. As Thomas Frank puts it, Clinton was a “technocrat who offered fine-tuning when the country wanted to take a sledgehammer to the machine.” So there’s some truth to Frank’s headline: “Donald Trump Is Moving to the White House, and Liberals Put Him There.”
It’s hard to get more ironic than that.
