The problem with Robert De Niro's using the F-word against President Donald Trump isn't the word itself. It's the absence of underlying content.
Indeed, even Trump seems a bit confused by the meaning of De Niro's weekend outburst. As if the actor hadn't reached a wide enough audience, the president decided to weigh in while flying back from his Singapore meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. "Robert De Niro, a very Low IQ individual, has received too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies. I watched him last night and truly believe he may be 'punch-drunk.' "
Punch-drunk, or maybe just missing the mark. The Academy Award winner dropped the F-bomb onstage during Sunday night's Tony Awards, where he was supposed to be introducing the equally famous Bruce Springsteen.
At this point, awards shows are generally understood to be glamorous fountains of not particularly helpful political commentary rather than go-to sources for incisive critiques. The practice of smug liberalism, with its divisive fallout, seems to reach its apotheosis during events such as the Oscars, Tonys and Golden Globes.
It's not even that such statements are obscene or unkind, as many on the right rushed to declare, no matter that the right can be performative in its own grating way. For better or for worse--or just for worse--obscenity has become an embedded feature of our discourse, emanating from the top down. It's an almost pleasant surprise that Trump limited his own rebuttal to "punch-drunk."
What's more worth sighing over is the fact that statements such as these are content-less and thus useless. They are sound and fury signifying nothing--inflammatory eruptions that degrade the quality of existing discussion without building anything in its place.
It's not clear that De Niro spurred the Tony Awards crowd (which, considering the estimated wealth and influence of its near-6,000 in-person attendees, might well be in a position to make some sort of change) to do anything but stand and cheer, then proceed to the after-party.
But how much can you expect from an actor? Well, more than these latest statements have delivered. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded De Niro the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in part because of his work as a philanthropist, something that his latest attempts at discourse have obscured. Instead of just declaring from the stage, perhaps De Niro and those like him could climb down and do something about it.
Editorial on 06/15/2018