NOTE: This column first appeared at Al Jazeera English a few weeks ago. Trump may have just "dropped out" of the Presidential race, but who he is and what he represents in our culture is as important as ever.

"Little Donnie Trump, the dumbest kid in the class." This only somewhat facetious refrain was proffered on a day when Trump had said something particularly insane, by a friend of my parents who attended school with The Donald when they were just boys.

Trump is a potential presidential candidate who has most recently hitched his hairpiece to Birtherism, or the slightly-less-clever-than-a-comb-over theory that President Obama only plays an American president on TV. In this fantasyland of conspiracy and fear of mind-control via fluorinated water, the president is the amazing beneficiary of the most prescient plot in human history - next to the invention of the hot dog centuries prior to the creation of baseball.

In Obama's case, it involved the planting of a birth announcement in a Honolulu newspaper to hide his "Kenyaness" and falsely convert him into an American citizen. Because one day, he would inevitably want to be the first black president, and at that moment it sure would come in handy.

That Trump has taken to promote this silliness should not be surprising. Because, it betrays what Donald Trump truly is: the living embodiment of every degrading aspect of American culture.

Trump is a guy who is famous for spinning a false resume - as a supposedly intelligent businessman - into fame and additional fortune. Much like with our national political conversation, the truth is incidental. Even when one's tall tales can be empirically proven to be as fake as the synthetic turf grass on Trump's noggin. It is of no matter.

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On the same day he trashed The New York Times on his blog for covering petty and completely meaningless tabloid stories (and nominated Peggy Noonan for a Pulitzer Prize), NBC's Brian Williams runs a 2+ minute "report" on the latest "controversy" surrounding teen superstar Miley Cyrus and the pictures Annie Leibovitz took of her for Vanity Fair magazine.

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MediaBloodhound notes that Williams spent almost twice as much time on this nonsense than he did on the landmark Supreme Court voting rights case decided yesterday.

What's more, Williams and NBC poorly handled those eighty whole seconds they allocated to the Supreme Court ruling on voter IDs. They not only failed to present one dissenting viewpoint - whether from a Supreme Court Justice, legal scholar, civil rights lawyer or voters in Indiana - but also to point out how this ruling will impact the upcoming primary in Indiana, where, as the Associated Press reported yesterday, "more than 20 percent of black voters do not have access to a valid photo ID."

Glenn wants to know, What Liberal Media?

C&L's Jamie Holly weighs in:

I think the ones who look at that picture as sexual are the ones we should be concerned about. Of course Drudge had this headline Sunday night:

UPDATE: Glenn has a "response" from Brian Williams to the Pentagon propaganda story, something Williams and the entire elite media has refused to cover.

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