It doesn't take a closed mind to realize that for a girl to get this sort of publicity and support from western culture, it requires powerful adults behind it all. Adults who have a very clear message they would like to send, and are using the rhetorical weight of a 16 year old girl to send it. I am glad we're all free to come to our own conclusions about whether Greta the individual is here or there in the whole equation.

If they'd put out a Hollywood casting call for the role of Greta, there would have been 1000s of auditions from ambitious teenage girls, and whomever they chose would have been considered at least as powerful a messenger as Greta is being considered, by the folk who just love the message.

How old would she need to be to be credible on her own?

quote:

Originally posted by Horace:
It doesn't take a closed mind to realize that for a girl to get this sort of publicity and support from western culture, it requires powerful adults behind it all. Adults who have a very clear message they would like to send, and are using the rhetorical weight of a 16 year old girl to send it. I am glad we're all free to come to our own conclusions about whether Greta the individual is here or there in the whole equation.

If they'd put out a Hollywood casting call for the role of Greta, there would have been 1000s of auditions from ambitious teenage girls, and whomever they chose would have been considered at least as powerful a messenger as Greta is being considered, by the folk who just love the message.

Which says precisely nothing about the insecurity and emotional maturity of someone who would stoop to making fun of her online because she was given an award that he wanted but didn't get.

Regardless of whether you think she is a stooge of other powerful people or not, can you at least not admit that it says something not admirable about someone who needs to go after her because she got an award that he wanted but didn't get? Or is Trumpism so stapled to your persona (online or otherwise) that you cannot even admit that?

See, I didn't call her a stooge, that's your word. I think she was in the right place at the right time to express the opinions of certain people who recognized they could put a spotlight on her and those opinions. I don't think those people needed to convince her of anything or trick her into anything. They just opened doors, and obviously the prerequisite was that the girl could be counted on to say certain things - things which those people who opened those doors wanted said.

Did Greta convince any adults of anything? Did she convince the people who opened those doors of anything? I suppose that would be an amusing narrative to put together. Greta cold calling people in the halls of power and getting herself an invite to the united nations, by sheer force of her persuasive message. But I don't really believe that that's how it went down.

As for Trump's tweets, I wasn't aware of them, and I don't think any of them have been reproduced in this thread. I won't go looking for them. If you would like my opinion on all the things Trump or his family says or does, feel free to make a thread asking for my opinion, any time, about anything.

I would ask what you thought of that law professor in the impeachment inquiry making a joke about Trump's 11 year old son, but God help me, I just couldn't care less what you think about that.

Let me be clear: I don’t believe you don’t know what he said. You seem pretty up on what a law professor said. I don’t believe you pay greater attention to law professors who you’ve never heard of before than the President.

Of course, Professor Karlan didn’t attack Barron. He just used his name as wordplay to make a point about his father imperial attitude. Specifically, here’s what he said:

"The Constitution says there can be no titles of nobility, so while the president can name his son Barron, he can’t make him a baron."

Try as I might, I can find no insult of Barron in that quote. It wasn’t making fun of the kid, it was making fun of his idiot father. But I am absolutely unsurprised at the faux outrage Trump supporters have generated. Of course, all the Trump supporters who manufactured that faux outrage were unable to be reached for comment about Trump’s attack on Greta Thunberg. Or pretended they were unaware of it.

I wasn't outraged at all by it personally. I thought it showed a particular disconnect from what will go over well to a national audience. It was, as they say, an unforced error. The most interesting part of it was that her life experience, up to that point, hadn't given her sufficient social awareness to know not to mention Trump's 11 year old kid in her remarks. It speaks to the echo chamber high status liberals tend to live in.