Wait, what? C'mon.

Celebrate the facts. Happy Black History Month! 

Obama used to be a law professor. This is key.

Law school is so, so different from college. 

In college, everyone expects there to be a “syllabus day,” kind of a grace period where they can show up and get the lay of the land, figure out the bare minimum that they can get away with, the TA gives everyone their office hours, there’s an introductory lecture, and everybody leaves a few minutes early to go take a nap or something. You do the bullshit assignments, you say something in class now and then to get your participation check mark, and figure out how badly you can do on the final and still pass. 

But see, in law school, all the methodologies you’ve spent the last 17 years operating under go out the window. Day one of law school is you being thrown into the deep end of the pool—you’ve had a homework assignment for two weeks now, and it’s to read the first 200 pages of your casebook. And now it’s you and the teacher (who is usually as smug as Alex Trebek) gauging and assessing what you managed to absorb while you skimmed through all those pages of reading so you could hurry up and get to the other 150 pages of reading for your next period class, in front of 50 people who are all smarter than you. And if you fuck up, or you didn’t do the reading, you are at the mercies of not just the professor, but the silent satisfied judgment of your peers. 

Law school is hard, and it will make you feel stupid and tongue-tied and like you don’t know anything and can’t form an argument—because you don’t, and you can’t. Everybody there has had a 4.0 since birth. Everybody there was the smartest kid in their class, and you’re all rabidly competing for a sliver of a chance at something down the road. It’s petty, and savage, fiercely entrenched in a culture of formalities and ceremony, and exactly like Washington DC. 

Yesterday when I was driving home, the NPR reporter talking about the Oval Office meeting mentioned that Trump had thought it was going to be a “getting to know you” type meeting, but that he was surprised when Obama stretched their talk out to 90 minutes before sending him along to the Capitol building where he met with congressional leaders for more lengthy meetings and stuff he didn’t want to do.

And he hasn’t even gotten to the actual job yet. 

So think about that as we go into this. 

Trump walked into the Oval Office like a two-pump-chump freshman thinking it was syllabus day, and what he got was the first day of law school, and he hadn’t done the reading like everyone else had, and Professor Obama decided to put him in the hot seat. 

This was Obama’s chance for the most perfect revenge that would never be picked up on as revenge at all. He was gracious, polite—everything he needed to be for a peaceful transition and a good review from the press. And that would continue when the doors were closed, because that’s the key. Not a Come to Jesus meeting, oh no. If Obama were smart—and he is very smart—he would have treated Trump like an equal, and brought the discussion to a level that assumes far more of Trump than anyone has so far. Assumes that he’s an adult who’s been paying attention. Statistics, esoteric minutiae about the executive branch procedure, economic growth numbers, labor figures, domestic policies, countries Trump has never even heard of, shit that would never in a million years have been in Trump’s campaign soundbites or digestible summaries. 

No way to escape. No aides to remember any of it for him. Just the two of them. 

Because that’s what would strike a precise chill into Trump. The thundering realization that he’s woefully unprepared for the hard, boring, thankless reality of this, and Obama’s version of a smooth transition won’t and shouldn’t include remedial civics. 

That’s what I saw when they shook hands and Trump stared at the floor instead of looking back into Obama’s face. He’s just figured out how little he knows about any of this. 

WHOA, HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?? -they assumed the white house staff would be sticking around, because they never watched “the west wing” and also because they are GRADE A FUCKSTICKS WITH THE INTELLIGENCE OF DEAD PRAWNS, and thus not only do they not have policy papers written, they are also lacking an actual body of qualified staffers ready to slot into white house and related positions -they have bupkis, frankly -whole lotta nothing

SOLUTION: -THEY HAVE PLACED AN OPEN CALL FOR STAFF APPLICATIONS ON THEIR WEBSITE

THAT’S NOT… VERY WEIRD, RIGHT? PEOPLE APPLIED TO WORK FOR OBAMA ONLINE -yeah, and the website looked like this -trump’s call for applications is a trainwreck. i assume it was written by one of trump’s three adult goblins. look at this paragraph:

“You will be asked fill out a Personal Data Statement if you are considered for a specific position. You will be asked about possible conflicts of interest… organization[s] which you belong or once belonged; speeches you may have given… legal, administrative and regulatory proceedings to which you may have been a party; in short, anything that might embarrass the President or you if he should choose you for a position in his administration…… If Senate confirmation is required for the position you are nominated for, the Senate committee that reviews those nominations may ask you to provide additional information.“ 

WAIT…. WHAT?? -just a little casual there, guys, huh? like…. the whole thing makes it sound like they don’t have a vetting team ready to go. it makes it feel like there’s no solid recruitment team or strategy in place and… -oh my God, wait a second -doesn’t that sound kind of like they’re asking people to vet themselves? -maybe because they are so WOEFULLY, CATASTROPHICALLY SHORT-HANDED?????? -pun intended

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN, ORANGE?? -well, i’m glad you asked, it could mean a lot of things -firstly: i wouldn’t trust these sloppy motherfuckers to staff a lemonade stand -secondly: like, YOU could go WORK FOR TRUMP, probably. they are mass-hiring, like a new denny’s franchise. like eight new denny’s franchises clustered around a single interstate exit, shivering in terror. is your head firmly affixed to your body? are you carbon-based?? they badly need people with those qualifications -thirdly: it may also, eventually, mean that the trump white house is going to produce an unheard-of metric fuckton of personnel scandals in its first year, since there’s no voluntary, self-reporting “are you a serial murderer” box to tick -also, do they not understand that people are going to apply just to fuck with them??? and waste their time??? -i don’t recommend it, honestly. i personally will not be submitting any private information to the trump team even as an obstructionist joke, because they are terrifying anti-semitic racist garbage-fucking hate trolls. i wouldn’t voluntarily give them the address of a shoe store. but if you choose to step up and play the game, have fun and be yourselves*

For those who have been thirsty for the worst advice, the Bad Advisor has wonderful, terrible news: Bad Advice will now appear every Tuesday at The Establishment. Read the first installment of brand-new bad advice here, now!

The Bad Advisor will continue to post Good Advice Interludes here on the ‘tumz, and she’ll link y’all every week to the new column in case you forget. (Don’t forget!)

The pillow is wet when you wake up. Your hair is still drying. It’s always drying. You washed it 3 days ago and need to wash it again soon. It’s still drying.

All the hair balls in your room seemed to have moved into one corner on their own. You don’t know where they’ve come from or how they keep growing. They feed on each other. Soon it’ll be too big for you to escape.

You comb your fingers through your hair only to pull out a clump of hair. You do it again and another clump comes with it. You do this several times with the same result, but the number of hairs on your head is both constant and infinite. 

Dear White People is becoming a series on Netflix