SIZE MATTERS (and why Kamala’s packing more than Donald)
SIZE MATTERS (and why Kamala’s packing more than Donald)
A few thoughts on crowd size, DUH, plus a few cool articles I read this week!
It probably drives Donald Trump absolutely insane that scientifically speaking, he can’t pull in even a third of the crowd that Kamala Harris can.
You read what I wrote correctly: in case you missed it back in August, it was announced that something called the Crowd Counting Consortium, or CCC, has been collecting data on crowd sizes at political rallies for about seven years. Early on in the 2024 election cycle, they decided to start monitoring crowd sizes for each of the major candidates. Now hold tight for a second, because I’m gonna throw a few numbers at you, but I promise it’s worth paying attention.
What they found is that on average, Trump has been pulling in crowds of around 5,600 people. For a political candidate, this is pretty dang good. I won’t take this away from him! Plus, those numbers are WAY up from 2023, where he averaged 4,600, and up a bit from 2022, where he averaged 5,200. Say what you will about Trump, man, but the dude can pull a crowd.
Compare these numbers to President Joe Biden, prior to him dropping out of the 2024 race, and these numbers are even more impressive. The CCC reports that Biden only ever pulled, on average, about 1,300 people. His highest total was back in 2022, when he pulled 2,400. For a man who famously cares a LOT about crowd size, this was Trump’s Patrick Bateman moment. He had the best damn business card, and he was more than proud to show it off.
But do y’all even remember that scene in American Psycho? I mean, do you even remember how it progressed?
Person after person in that room dropped their own business cards on the table, showing subtle differences that sent Bateman spiraling as he realized his own business card wasn’t the best - before being shown his associate Paul Allen’s, the quality of which sends Bateman into a sweaty panic.
The point of that scene, like many others in Mary Harron’s satirical adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ meandering novel, was to send up the lunacy of corporate masculinity. The measurement of swinging dicks through business cards and their subtle shades of white, or the ability to get a reservation at Dorsia on a Saturday with a day’s notice.
None of it matters, but to these men, these are life or death stakes that Harron, and her brilliant co-writer Guinevere Turner, correctly realize are frivolous spats done by men who are so bored with their mundane lives that they have to get their kicks by comparing business cards or, I dunno, making up an elaborate story about being a serial killer in New York.
And yet… if we play ball with the idea that size matters for a minute, it must be absolutely deflating to Donald Trump that his Paul Allen is none other than Kamala Harris.
According to the CCC, while Trump was pulling in 5,600 people to his rallies, Kamala Harris has been pulling in anywhere from 10,000 to about 15,000, and, quote, “we calculate an average size…of about 13,400.”
The last time Trump matched or exceeded this number was in 2021, when he averaged 15,000 or so attendees at his rallies. And Kamala’s numbers have just been growing ever since; as Newsweek reported on October 29, 2024:
“More than 75,000 spectators gathered in Washington, D.C., to hear Vice President Kamala Harris' closing argument speech at the same site of former President Donald Trump's infamous "Save America" rally that preceded the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
As a reminder, nearly 53,000 people descended upon the Capitol and attempted to stage an insurrection on January 6, 2021. Kamala Harris pulled in around 150% of those numbers, at the same location, and nobody tried to storm the Capitol this time.
But even to use a more recent comparison, Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which indeed sold out, is said to have hit a max capacity of just under 20,000 people.
If crowd size matters, then Don’s likely gotta have the gnarliest case of penis envy there is.
It’s fitting that today is Halloween, because the absolute spookiest thing in the world to Donald Trump is happening today: science is proving that this man absolutely cannot pull the crowds that his much more qualified female opponent is pulling. Bro is straight up HAUNTED by this.
Kamala Harris is harnessing a real passion from crowds all over America, and it’s not even close.
There’s a reason why everybody remembers Paul Allen and lets him into Dorsia, Don.
And there’s a reason why everybody thinks Patrick Bateman is a big lame weirdo.
Also, how cool is it that AMERICAN PSYCHO was directed and written by a pair of women, one of whom went on to write for The L Word? I C O N I C .
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Speaking of Madison Square Garden, there’s been a lot of ink spilled on the parallels between Trump’s despicable Madison Square Garden rally, where comedian Tony Hinchcliffe managed to piss off the entirety of Puerto Rico with one horrible but telling comment, and the infamous 1939 Nazi rally at the same venue.
John Leland and Maria Cramer wrote a comprehensive article titled “Presidents, Conventions and Nazis: A Political History of ‘The Garden’” for the New York Times that goes over the many parallels between those two nights, while also outlining the history of political events that have been held at the Garden, who recently defended themselves against backlash for the Trump rally by claiming “We Are Neutral in Political Matters.”
It’s important to note that Leland and Cramer wrote this article prior to the Trump rally, but some of the details within feel interchangeable with what ended up transpiring.
20,000 or so people showed up to the “Pro America Rally” in support of Adolf Hitler, 20,000 or so showed up to Trump’s rally. Countless protesters lined the streets outside the 1939 rally; the New York Post reports countless protesters outside the 2024 rally.
Speakers at one rally railed against the “Jewish-controlled press…” at the other, Puerto Rico was called a “floating island of garbage” and it was implied that Black people should carve watermelons for Halloween. Ugh. Whether they intended to or not, Leland and Cramer made the parallels apparent before the night even happened. It was even pointed out that just days ago, former Trump White House chief of staff John F. Kelly said that Trump fit the definition of a fascist.
These comparisons between Orange Man and Hitler are nothing new, and honestly one of the easiest ways to get a series of eye rolls from a desensitized audience who find Trump to be more of a buffoon than a danger, or maybe they even find him dangerous, but think the comparison is tacky or offensive. And look folks, I get it.
But c’mon. C’MON.
There are so many parallels that you might as well just make an Animorphs cover with Trump morphing into Hitler and call it a day at this point.
All that aside, Leland and Cramer crafted a wonderful article on the political history of The Garden that I can’t recommend enough. Even apart from the Trump and the Hitler and the scary parallels, they provide information on everything from the riot that was the 1924 Democratic National Convention to that time Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday to JFK (yep, that crazy ass moment in history happened at Madison Square Garden).
It’s worth your time - give it a read!
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Maybe the most meaningful discussion happening right now involves the responsibility of the U.S. press and the controversy surrounding the idea of whether a news publication is entitled to endorse any candidate in a presidential election.
This was kickstarted by an announcement that the Los Angeles Times had chosen not to endorse a presidential candidate this year, which itself was followed by reporting that Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong blocked their editorial board from endorsing a candidate at all.
This ultimately led to the resignation of at least three journalists and editors from the paper, with editorial page editor Mariel Garza telling the Columbia Journalism Review that she was resigning due to her belief that silence isn’t an option this year.
“In dangerous times, honest people need to stand up. This is how I’m standing up.”
It’s likely that all eyes would have been on the LA Times and what was perceived by many (including me) to be an act of cowardice from its owners - if it weren’t for an even bigger bozo in the form of Bezos.
David Folkenflik’s title for his report at NPR says it all: “Over 200,000 subscribers flee 'Washington Post' after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement.” As his report outlines, this accounts for around 8 percent of WaPo’s 2.5 million or so subscribers - the kind of drop-off we don’t see happening in real time unless it’s happening to disgraced YouTubers, or me when I accidentally miss a step on a staircase.
Folkenfik outlines the bizarre synchronicity between WaPo and LA Times’ moves, and posits the question of whether these publications were acting to appease Trump. WaPo’s Chief Executive and Publisher Will Lewis denies this, claiming the paper SUDDENLY remembered it was an “independent” paper and wished to return to its roots. Sure Will. And I’m a heterosexual Trump supporter. It’s Opposite Day, right?
Bezos, for his part, calls the timing of the announcement “inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy," which is the most believable statement that’s been made since the one I made three sentences ago, and I think I’m really just so very tired.
Yet I can’t imagine how tired the Post’s staff must be, with three of Sunday’s top posts being articles written by angry Post staffers, according to Folkenfik, who points out that the number one article was written by humor columnist Alexandra Petri, whose headline is, “It has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president.”
I’m cheating by diverting from the wonderful Folkenfik piece for a minute here, but Petri’s is just as fantastic, if not more so, and includes this excellent passage:
“We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those “roots,” I’m told!
Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king! Go even further back, and the entire continent of North America was totally uninhabitable, and we were all spineless creatures who lived in the ocean, and certainly there were no Post subscribers.”
Today, as Petri and Folkenfik describe it, the most spineless creatures are actually the ones at the helm of The Washington Post and the LA Times.
As I outlined in my last article for paid subscribers here on Substack, (which I think is pretty good - if you sign up today for $7 per month or $70 per year, you can read that, as well as another paid-only article every Monday!) each election is equally important for a number of reasons, and it’s always vital that we make sure that we participate in keeping bad actors away from infringing upon our rights. But part of the responsibility in free and fair elections is also being responsibly informed with all available information.
WaPo and the LA Times are in no way obligated to endorse a candidate, but to publicly announce a discontinuation of endorsing candidates mere weeks away from the election is a commitment to cowardice that cannot be understated. The owners are effectively telling their audience not that they are impartial tellers of truth - but rather, that they cannot be trusted to honestly depict one of the most important events in American tradition.
Which isn’t in any way fair to the countless hard working, ethical journalists either still working there or vacating their positions as a result of this snafu, since it is worth noting these decisions seemed to be completely unilateral.
As of me writing this, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, The Las Vegas Sun and The New Yorker have endorsed Kamala Harris, while Trump has received backing from the New York Post, the Washington Times, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. No matter your political leanings, these are publications staking their reputations on what they believe the right choice for democracy is.
I’m not surprised that the New York Post has endorsed Trump, yet in a way I respect them more for being honest with their morals than I do Bezos or Soon-Shiong, because they aren’t trying to sidestep how important this election is.
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In keeping with my Thursday tradition of wanting to end on a lighter note, I need to address the strangest recurring bit of the past few years: the one where Helen Mirren consistently laments that Kurt Cobain didn’t live to experience random technological advancements.
“Helen Mirren Says ‘It’s So Sad Kurt Cobain Died When He Did Because He Never Saw GPS.’” An article by Steven J. Horowitz for Variety.
This is the latest development in a truly bizarre saga where Helen Mirren has me asking lmao girl wtf, because even with the proper context, this rabbit hole gets weirder and weirder.
Right out the gate, Horowitz refers to an interview with Evening Standard’s Brave New World, where Mirren is quoted as saying, “I always say, it’s so sad that Kurt Cobain died when he did, because he never saw GPS. GPS is the most wonderful thing, to watch my little blue spot walking down the street. I just find it completely magical and unbelievable.”
Now, the context for this specific quote checks out. Horowitz points out that she threw this in as an anecdote about aging, and how aging itself can be a gift.
“I’m 79!” Mirren exclaimed. “I never thought I’d be 79. And then you say, OK, well this is it. This is what 79 is. And it’s kind of OK. It’s not brilliant, but it was not that brilliant to be 25 either.” Fair enough.
But Horowitz looked back and found this isn’t even close to the first time Mirren has used the deceased Nirvana frontman as an anecdote.
In 2014, she told Oprah that the digital world was fascinating, telling her that Kurt Cobain “hardly even saw a computer!” A year after that, she told Cosmopolitan that she was thinking about how Kurt Cobain never knew the internet. A year after THAT, she told the Daily Mail, “If I’d died at 27, the age that Kurt Cobain died in 1994, I’d never have even known there was an internet! Incredible things are happening all the time and I can’t wait to see what comes next.”
I dug a little deeper outside of Horowitz’ article and was shocked to find this isn’t even the first time Helen Mirren has been sad about Kurt not getting to experience GPS. She once said in an interview on Oprah’s website in 2020:
"The way I see it, you have two choices in life: You can either get older, or die. And I want to continue to see what life has in store. I think about Kurt Cobain and all that he missed. I mean, how sad is it that he never knew about GPS."
There are two perspectives I’d like to share on the great Helen Mirren Being Obsessed With Kurt Cobain story™️ of 2024.
First, it is downright adorable that Helen Mirren seems to be obsessed with Kurt Cobain. I’d like to imagine Helen sitting back, sipping a nice cup of tea, petting her Academy Award, and just vibing to Heart-Shaped Box. It’s a match made in Heaven, and something tells me that Kurt himself would have loved having her as a fan.
But second, I think it’s time to stop asking Helen Mirren, and for that matter all actresses, what they think about aging. This isn’t really a question that ever seems to pop up in interviews with men, and even though women, on average, are treated far more unfairly than men as they get older in Hollywood (and most industries), that doesn’t mean each woman needs to be quizzed on what it’s like to get older.
This is one of the laziest questions to ask a woman; all you have to do is look at an article like this one and see that woman, after woman, after woman is asked - though they ALWAYS handle the question with grace, often serving hot fire in the process - like when Taraji P. Henson told Kelly Clarkson, “I want to be the representation for women that your sexy never dies ‘till you’re in the box.”
When Helen Mirren is asked about aging, she’s using Kurt Cobain as an example of what happens when youth gets frozen in crystal forever. The “good who die young” miss out on experience, they miss out on life, they miss out on progress, and they miss out on, yes, GPS.
The quote may be silly, but the sentiment is not. Godspeed, Helen Mirren, for pointing out both the good qualities of aging AND the merits of GPS.
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And of course…
Moo Deng 4evr
PS:
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