When does Out-of-Context become the Context?
By: Brian Kean
Tags: Context, White House, Fake News, Fox News, Republicans

I am a walrus.

He said he is a walrus.

You took my words out of context, I didn’t say that.

This is the way Republicans, their supporters and apologists roll nowadays. Say anything, man, I mean anything you want and then when the murmurs of indignation commence, assume your best “who me” face and declare that another literal liberal launched another lame gotcha-trap on a poor unassuming patriot.

Yes, we liberals are literalists if taking responsibility for one’s words means that we are literally abiding by what we said. Of course, trying to deny what was said isn’t just a habit of politicians and cannot be solely assigned to Republicans. Lying and avoiding the strictures placed upon our shoulders as a result of the spoken world has long been a human trait.

Republicans, however, have taken it to a new level. So much so, that literally after the words fall from their mouths, and attending journalists agape at the horror of the latest slur, gather their wits and ask for a clarification, Republicans race for the escape pods, ejecting themselves from context.

“One thing we’ve seen in a lot of the Black community, which is mostly Democrat, is that President Trump’s policies are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they’re complaining about,” Mr. Kushner said in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” the president’s favorite morning cable show. “But he can’t want them to be successful more than they want to be successful (Kushner employing racist language).”

Kay-Kay McEnany, the Trump-universe apologist and soon-to-be Fox News anchor — she has the look, right? — offered up in his defense the inevitable his words were taken of context by internet trolls. Yes, she did say this, “internet trolls.” By this she means, most likely, people who actually read (heard) his words and then merely repeated them.

I imagine this “troll” sitting home in his kitchen or socially distanced at a Starbucks, sipping on a freshly-brewed coffee with almond milk, a far cry from the days when trolls resided under bridges waiting to pounce on unsuspecting goats — kind of like the one below.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The “out of context” excuse very snugly aligns itself with the term “fake news.” When a Republican operative says something heinous and foul offending others bound by the norms of polite society, cover is provided by these two handy-dandy terms which actually question the existence of reality.

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

I would like to be a penguin.

He said he wants to be a penguin. Can you believe that? What the f*, man?

Fake news. I never said that; or, you took that out of context, that’s not what I meant, troll.

In the world on the right, the buck never stops anywhere because the context from which it emanated never happened. Everything is nothing in the world of the conservative and just as easily nothing is everything. A new Supreme Justice was chosen one week before an election but President Obama was denied his choice nine months prior to the election in 2016 — fake news or you took us out of context, right?

We used to be a nation where one’s word meant something. A society where when vileness was spoken, people paid with their positions for the offensive words. Today, thanks to Republicans, and empowered by Fox, stupid, racist and misogynistic words can be shaken off like raindrops from the back of happily floating duck on a tranquil lake.

No one on the right takes responsibility for anything because nothing ever really happens; it’s either fake or been twisted, turned, melted, sliced and diced and then tossed into the heap of “out-of-context.”

Which reminds me of a joke from the Soviet Union. A Japanese businessman travels to Moscow in 1980 and asks a Russian person about the empty shelves in stores:

Japanese man (JM): I noticed the stores are all empty.

That’s not true, what are looking for?

JM: Well, I need a Laz-y-Boy chair, do you have them?

In principal, yes, we do.

JM: I need an air conditioner, do you have these?

Of course, in principal.

JM: I would love to get a pull-out couch to sleep on, do you have these?

Absolutely, we do. In principal.

JM: Last question, then, can you tell me how to find this store “in principal”?

This is my request to the Republicans, and to Kay-Kay, please direct me to the land of “context.”