A real gaffe house

Is a coarse synonym for “outhouse”, on the lips of the President of the United States, a gaffe?

In a meeting with lawmakers yesterday to negotiate an immigration deal, President Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and several countries in Africa as “sh*tholes”.  From the New York Times:

The plan outlined by Mr. Graham and Mr. Durbin, according to people familiar with it, would also include more than $2.5 billion for border security and a grant of protected status for the parents of the immigrants, known as Dreamers, who would be barred from sponsoring their parents for citizenship.

Mr. Trump grew angry as the group detailed another aspect of the deal - a move to end the diversity visa lottery program and use some of the 50,000 visas that are annually distributed as part of the program to protect vulnerable populations who have been living in the United States under what is known as Temporary Protected Status.  That was when Mr. Durbin mentioned Haiti, prompting the president's criticism.

When the discussion turned to African nations, those with knowledge of the conversation added, Mr. Trump asked why he would want "all these people from shithole countries," adding that the United States should admit more people from places like Norway.

A radio newscast this morning reported that the White House was positioning the president's characterization as "a gaffe".

Just as one can’t look away from a fiery wreck on a highway, one  finds it difficult to resist the instinct to wonder, “What was in the President’s mind that caused him to utter this regrettable phrase?”  – That is to say, I’d regret it if I were to utter it; with him, one never is quite sure that he has the regret gene.

There are simple mistakes in public speaking: people commit spoonerisms and malapropisms.  There are mispronunciations: deacons apparently are notorious, when proclaiming the Gospel reading for Epiphany, for erroneously stating that the three wise men “prostated themselves” before the holy child.   Given the age and health status of men in the diaconate, prostate references  may be more than an innocent slip of the tongue.  

And that possibility of psychological complexity brings us to gaffes.  Because a gaffe is more than a simple trip-up of the tongue.  A gaffe is thought to involve a trip-up of the brain as well.  A classic gaffe encompasses these elements:

• Something is misstated, or is stated offensively
• The error provides what is widely thought to be a window into the unfortunate speaker’s soul

A real gaffe represents a slipping of the mask.  That mask we wear in public is the essential lubricant of social intercourse that demands that we feign tolerance for people whom we actually cannot stand, or for ideas or concepts that have social cachet but which, on our less enlightened days, we find we cannot bring ourselves to embrace.  

In recent political annals, the gaffe that leaps immediately to mind is Mitt Romney’s claim that “there are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what … these are people who pay no income tax.”  For that particular driven and disciplined specimen, whose every $5,000 suit was perfectly tailored and every individual hair moussed into its assigned resting place, the remark seemed to provide that briefest glimpse past the sentry, over the wall, and into the rather disordered inner courtyards of a Mitt Romney, where the lawns of his innermost soul have a few bare patches and tufts of crabgrass, and a bicycle has been left lying in the middle of the driveway.  The "47%" statement was taken to be the unfiltered emotions - scorn and derision - that someone in Mitt Romney's tax bracket might plausibly feel toward low-income fellow citizens.  It was a  fleeting but riveting impression of a lesser Mitt Romney.

To be sure, gaffes presuppose walls and sentries -  they are committed by men and women who wear the mask.  I am not sure it is still an open question anymore whether Donald Trump gives a damn about social lubricant.  Maybe, with him, there is no mask to slip.  Maybe it wasn’t a gaffe.  Maybe it’s just him.  Maybe Private Donald Trump and Public Donald Trump are one and the same.  

Several friends with whom I've discussed this vulgar incident have taken the position, 'it's not that he used the word "sh*thole".  People talk like that in private, among intimate friends.  But this wasn't private, as that would be commonly understood. This was a formal negotiation.  It was a business meeting.'  What seems to them to be the heart of the faux pas is not the opinion itself, even though they don't endorse it, but rather that he lacks the social grace, perhaps the social awareness, to hit the brakes before such a sentiment comes tumbling out of his mouth.

And then there is the possibility that it was done in full consciousness, staged, expecting it to play out as I think it will: the media and the establishment will condemn him - yet again.  And his base will think it's dandy that the iconoclast has swept another row of figurines off the shelf onto the floor and left the shattered pieces lying there.