Cast in the Image of the President

The Presidential challenge coin of Donald J. Trump breaks with tradition in a few ways--for one thing, it is not round. Coins are usually round, but Trump's has a banner with his name at the bottom. The name "Donald J. Trump" is also at the top. His signature is also on it. And the Presidential Seal and the motto "E Pluribus Unum" are gone, but his motto: "Make America Great Again", is on it. 

I would say it breaks tradition because Donald Trump doesn't consider himself a part of preceding tradition. Could a nation that bears a motto "Out of many, one" be the same that tolerates Trump's appalling ideas about who the many actually are? This is not a challenge coin, so much as a struggle coin. He struggles to believe he is President.  It is the insecure emblazoning of a name all over an office he has little business being in. As with Trump's whinges about fraudulent votes being responsible for his loss in the popular vote, his touting of his electoral numbers, and his flunkies' lies about his inaugural crowd size, he seems like a person desperate to prove his legitimacy, and would do everything except the one thing that might prove it--act presidential, even a little!

Eh. Is this coin as tacky as the Presidential medal swag?  I do wonder if people receiving one will be quite as impressed. And coins do exist that have Trump's likeness on them, which have quite a bit of value, of the only sort I would have believed Trump to actually understand. 

He can not help being so personally cheap, but it is sad to see everything he touches becoming cheap as well.

One More Time Mitt Flair.

I feel like I'm really, really late to this thing--but I honestly never knew about the Mitt Romney-themed Olympic pins.  I knew, vaguely, about the Olympic pins from 2002 being manufactured in China, despite many of them having a patriotic American theme, but that's almost a cliche, right?

But Mitt Romney's likeness appears on Olympic pins. Huh.

Apparently, this was a thing:

Critic Ken Bullock has them in his Olympic pin collection. 

"We have Valentine's ones with all the Olympic mascots around saying, 'We love you, Mitt,' " Bullock says, as he pulls up images of the pins on his computer. 

"We have him pulling a sled of some sort where some of the mascots are saying, 'Are we there yet, Mitt?' " 

Ken Bullock scoffs at what he calls "the Superman" pin, which features Romney "with a Clark Kent chin," wrapped in an American flag. 

"I don't know how to put words to describe how narcissistic they are," Bullock says.Three Olympic pin collectors and experts consulted by NPR say they've never seen pins like these featuring the CEO of an Olympic organizing committee.

I have honestly nothing else to say about that.

(Pointed here by Rumproast commenter Bette Noir.)

I theoretically posit a God that doesn't like "tacky".

This is a collection of hit'n'run stories I couldn't help but notice:

Six-Story "Butter Jesus" goes down In Flames--Church will Rebuild

That isn't the actual title of this story from WKRC in Cincinnati, but it sums up the tale of a veritible icon of the Internets--the "Butter Jesus" or "Touchdown Jesus", a rough-hewn, six-story, upper-torso of the Redeemer with arms out-stretched, tacky roadside attraction, that to many, summed up the ostentatious "badness" of much religious "art"--which was struck by lightning and burned, as if smitten (smote?) from above. I'm kind of hoping they change the design a little, to something a tiny bit more tasteful. Maybe they could go with "glow in the dark"?

In other news, the Painter Of Light was apparently "Lit" in this story from Gawker, which is where I honestly get a lot of my news, anymore.
I hate ripping on an artist just trying to make a buck, but, damn, he paints some funky "twee"-looking nonsense. You just expect a pixie to come sparkling out of his ultra-flourescent flower bushes. And why are the windows of all his buildings lit up like that? In Kincade-ville, folks are simple and spiritual, but their electric bills are ridiculous. For the record, DUI, bad. But for me, inspirational prayer-garden, solitary chapel, snowy Christmas big-ass cottage schlock is like Chicken Soup for the Taste-Impaired and Religiously Bent.

Although this story has nothing to do with "art", it has a bunch to do with "tacky"--

Mormons Found Guilty on 13 Counts of Prop 8 Malfeasance, Fined by FPPC

To my way of thinking, a whole group of religious busybodies prying their way financially and politically into the personal lives of hundreds of couples in California strikes me as awfully tacky. Not just illegal--tacky. They could have minded their own business, saved their money, and tithed to something good like malaria nets for people in Africa or something. But instead, they had to propagandize about who grown people chose to make their official life-partners, and that is sad. But really? Tacky. Tacky. Tacky.