Trump and Kitsch

President Donald Trump has some odd notions about exercise.

The man who claimed, through his doctor, to be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” and mocked his opponents as “low energy” and “sleepy” doesn’t disguise his disdain for unnecessary physical exertion. He believes that human beings are born with a finite amount of life force, and that to squander it is foolhardy. He is the first president since Ronald Reagan to avoid jogging.

Nevertheless, to keep his crowds pumped, his campaign has repeatedly used the most famous anthem to working out in the history of music -- the Village People’s “YMCA.” Trump himself can often be seen boogying to the 40-year-old tunes at the end of his rallies, apparently unworried that a few dance moves could tap his final reserves.

This attracted a few online double-takes. Could the messiah to the Religious Right and running mate of Mike Pence really be a fan of the most flamboyantly gay band to outlive the disco era?

Unbreakable Bonds

My Christmas gift to myself last year was Batman #17, a 1943 comic. The cover shows Batman and Robin riding a bald eagle, urging the reader to keep it flying by buying war bonds and stamps.

As a Batman fan, I’ve always been drawn to the World War II war bond covers--I’m not totally sure why. They don’t feature the elements usually associated with the Dark Knight. There are no dark alleys, bizarre aliens or maniacal clowns. I guess they’re just a simple reminder of Batman’s national significance, only a few years after his creation.

It was already the crown jewel of my comics collection, but it will have a whole new dimension of meaning to me now, in the age of coronavirus. Some have objected to comparing the outbreak to World War II, but I don’t know how else to think about it. It’s the only other time in our cultural memory that the U.S. government has asked its citizens to make such extraordinary sacrifices to serve a common cause and defeat a global threat.

#TheDress and International Taxes

Yesterday was the five-year anniversary of #TheDress, one of the most fascinating and confounding Internet memes of the past decade. At the time, I saw a remarkable parallel to an international tax policy issue , and considered writing a blog post comparing the two. I wrote it out, but decided not to submit it to my editors—and I’ve regretted it ever since. Here it is, with minimal edits and an update at the end.

March 1, 2015

Unless you spent this weekend away from your computer, your TV, and your phone, you probably heard about “The Dress”—or as it became known on social media, #TheDress. The garment, pictured above, seemed ordinary enough, until people started to describe it. Some people said it was gold and white, others said it was black and blue, and neither group could figure out what in the world the other was talking about. Tens of millions of people on every continent spent Thursday night arguing about it, and it lasted throughout the weekend.

(I can’t see anything other than gold and white. Believe me, I tried.)

The answer, it turns out, wasn’t some social delusion, sorcery, or a mass outbreak of color-blindness. It didn’t even really have to do with eyesight or color. Experts suspect it is due to slight variations in neurology creating differences in how people interpreted the images, color, and light in the picture lead to very different conclusions about what was being depicted.

There’s a similar dynamic which sometimes occurs when governments look at complex corporate tax structures. Due to differences in laws and customs—often slight—tax authorities can come to quite different conclusions about what a structure is, and how it should be taxed. And while #TheDress just resulted in a few moments of amusing online diversion, when it comes to international taxation this phenomenon can cause a serious problem.