Lena Dunham on Monday added another contribution to the wealth of fair and well-reasoned celebrity analysis that grows every day in the era of Trump.
Just kidding, she compared the president to a deranged mass shooter who tried to start a race war.
In response to another Twitter user’s thread arguing President Trump is a racist, Dunham chimed in to reply, “Not only is he a racist but he’s a racist with untreated mental illness. So under diff circumstances he’s Dylann Roof.”
Dylann Roof, of course, is the white supremacist who in 2015 murdered nine African-American churchgoers during a prayer service after they welcomed him in, later claiming, “What I did is still minuscule to what they’re doing to white people every day.”
Roof is among the most repulsive human beings alive. To use him as a point of comparison for Trump in a half-baked Twitter quip exploits tragedy to score cheap points against the president. It’s also just bizarre.
Dunham is unbothered by criticism from conservatives and likely won’t be convinced her tweet was anything but fair and accurate. But back in October 2016, the actress chastised another Twitter user with the observation, “my vibe is you’re not here to join the dialogue in a constructive way & that’s boring AF.”
I’m getting similar vibes right now, but this time from the arbiter of constructive dialogue herself. Although it’s not impossible her standard for what constitutes such dialogue allows for some extreme rhetoric when it’s directed at people with whom she disagrees.
I don’t know what it is, but celebrities flinging around psychiatric diagnoses and comparing the president to a mass murderer just doesn’t feel very constructive.
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
