The internet has questions about the governor’s boots. So I asked the experts.

Is this important journalism? No way. Is it funny as shit? I think so.

    • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
      265·
      1 year ago

      Why do people keep adding “-gate” to end of words to signal a scandal?? Can we please stop. The only scandal that that fits is Watergate, because that was the name of the fucking hotel!

        • itsonlygeorge@reddthat.com
          13·
          1 year ago

          I disagree. There is no such thing as a bootgate. Or the bootgate hotel. It is a silly made up word that is poor writing and journalism. The English language has plenty of descriptive words.

          • JoBo@feddit.uk
            6·
            1 year ago

            You don’t get to disagree. You don’t have to like it but the formulation is used because it is succinct and immediately understood. And that is how language works, whether you like it or not.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        I remember in the 90s, when the compliant media was going along with a lot of hate radio, the snake handlers, and the black helicopter/Alex Jones/Bircher types that were all still hopping mad (and still are, if they are still kicking around) about not only Watergate (*), but also that Iran/Contra was getting a bit of coverage, too, and virtually everything, ever, was spun into a failed attempt to make a new scandal out of…Fostergate, Whitewatergate, Filegate, Travelgate, ChristmasOrnamentGate, ChinaGate, BrownGate, etc…

        (*) - Being discovered, that is.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        1 year ago

        Oh, in addition, the radicalized right wing - and some of the left that likes to pretend they are so “principled”, or that liberals are just showing “Russophobia” - kept calling the coverage of donnie’s collusion with Russia, “Russiagate”. Of course, they call all of it a “hoax”.

  • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
    452·
    1 year ago

    Won’t call myself an expert but as my username suggests I’m also in the industry. If nothing else just looking at how he walks and stands is enough to tell he is lifting his shoes.

    This being said I really hate that the media is fixating on the turds height insecurity and not the fact he is a mask-off authoritarian fascist that is trying to become president. It’s like making fun of Hitler for his mustache, I mean it’s kinda humorous but let’s not let that distract from all the other more important shit

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
      392·
      1 year ago

      I work for and teach for a University hospital located in the south, specializing in orthotics and prosthetics. I have built dozens of lifts for cowboy boots, mainly for people with severe limb length discrepancies.

      He is 100 percent wearing a boot with around 3-4 inches of heel to ball internal lifts. The biggest giveaway in my opinion is that the boots are probably 2-3 sizes too big. The toe break in a normal shoe happens at the widest part of the shoe, you can tell his big toe is currently right where the first methead should be. This is why it looks like he’s wearing genie shoes, the shoe is breaking closer to the toe box because there’s nothing in them to prevent them bending backwards. .

      Now if he wasn’t wearing lifts he wouldn’t be able to keep them on, as cowboy boots require a tight fitting vamp to stay attached. The lift raises the heels and thus the dorsum of the foot to press tightly against the vamp of an oversized boot.

      The biggest thing I see that the article missed is that you can tell he is in hindfoot varus. Which is generally what happens when you do a sustained heel raise, enable to occasionally offload the posterior tibial tendon, moving some of the load to the peroneal tendon. This is why his foot is rolling over the lateral aspect of the boot.

      This could occur naturally, but it’s pretty rare outside of people who were born with clubbing in their feet. So I looked for other pictures of him walking in different shoes and found a pair of him walking in rain boots. In that picture he was over pronating and running over the medial side. So it’s safe to assume that the supination in the boots are not a naturally acquired deformity.

      If it makes anyone feel better, this guy is in some serious pain anytime he wears his lift. If he hasn’t already done so, he looks like he’s not to far away from a Jones fracture in his left foot. The left side looks like he’s about 5-7 degrees of extra hindfoot varus than his right, which usually means he’s damaged his peroneal tendon, or where it attaches to at the base of the fifth tarsal bone.

    • halferect@lemmy.world
      201·
      1 year ago

      I think having a laugh at him hurts him more with his base because that is something republican voters care about, the authoritarian facisism is a plus to republican voters so media focusing on his book banning or taking on Disney for LGBT stuff only shows things Republicans like and want more of but a short loser who needs heels to just make it to 5 11 is a big no vote. And the 24 hour news cycle has covered his fascist shit pretty well.

    • Vespair@lemm.ee
      3·
      1 year ago

      Because he’s fully shameless about his moral bankruptcy and authoritarian tendencies, but apparently full of shame of about his height.

      Yeah, we as citizens should care more about the former, but there is some catharsis to be had knowing how much he seems to care about the latter.

    • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      Taking the high road isn’t working.

      We can point out he is a authoritarian nazi chomo until we’re blue in the face and it won’t matter, because the people voting for him don’t care, or don’t believe.

      But these people put a lot of effort into their Big Strong And Definitely Not Gay political fursona. So we make fun of how short they are, and how weak they are that they have to hide it, and we suggewt that maybe they’d like a nice strong bear of a man to cuddle them. That’s not weird or wrong to me, and it isn’t weird or wrong to most people, but it is weird and wrong to people who are trying to say he’s a Big Strong Authoritarian Who Definitely Isn’t Short And Gay.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    131·
    1 year ago

    Trump has started a cargo cult.

    They’re all trying to replace him now, using stupid things that they think worked for Trump. Making themselves look taller while leaning forward at an unnatural angle, saying horrendous shit, being generally despicable and having no filter required for the top job.

    Trump got popular because people knew him. He was a celebrity. TV shows and shit. People are dumb as fuck and vote for people they’ve heard of. You could put Dolly Parton up there right now and get 60% of the popular vote.

    • tech@lemmy.world
      101·
      1 year ago

      Dolly is a gigantic supporter of libraries and books in general. She couldn’t get 60% of the vote because Republicans hate her.

      • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
        41·
        1 year ago

        Everyone likes Dolly. There’s no religious or political indoctrination strong enough to break that.

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
          5·
          1 year ago

          Unfortunately, I’m not sure about that. Years ago, FOX News called Mr. Rogers an evil man for telling kids that they are special. And that was before the right got as rabid as it is today. If Dolly became a political candidate, I don’t doubt that the right would find something to hate her for. (Likely the fact that she gets kids to read. How horrible!!!)

    • LizEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Then there’s me, drooling over the pair of zero-drop Jim Green African Ranger boot. We each got our thing, I guess. Free the men from footwear oppression!

      • IMALlama@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        Man, a barefoot style boot. I had toe shoes for years and only recently discovered this style. They’re a lot more discreet, but now that it’s getting colder out I’m looking for something warmer.

        • LizEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          The rangers are the first ones I’ve seen that can actually be resoled, all the other barefoot boots I’ve found (precious few) cannot. With resoling, you get the longevity of leather boots with the ground-feel and foot shape of barefoot shoes. Plus, you get to choose your outsole when it’s time to resole.

      • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
        15·
        1 year ago

        Its a shoe with heels higher than the toes, regardless of the purpose or visibility, hence the name high heels. “height booster” applies to both as well. The only difference here is the gender of the wearer; women wear platform heels and boots all the time, with the sole intention of boosting their height, that don’t call attention to their being “high heels”. Yet we still call them that.

        I don’t see the point in delineating in this special case other than that to call them high heels might be even more emasculating (at least to a conservative base) than the writer probably intended.

        It doesn’t have to be a “conspiracy” to be a double standard, and it clearly is one, so why are you so intent on denying it? I just want to know- nay, I am demanding to know!! Why isn’t Ronnie here leading the charge in normalizing high heels for strong, conservative men!?

        • Pipoca@lemmy.world
          31·
          1 year ago

          If a high heel is any shoe with a raised heel, would that make a low heel a shoe with the heel under the toes, and a mid heel a flat?

          As I understand it, a heel is a shoe with an obviously raised heel, and high, mid and low are modifiers on the height of the heel - a 1" heel is a low heel, while a 5" heel is a high heel.

          Shoes styled to look like a flat but with a hidden internal raised heel are called lifts.

          • meowMix2525@lemm.ee
            12·
            1 year ago

            a shoe with the heel under the toes

            Doesn’t exist. If it were to, it would be so wildly impractical that I doubt the name would follow normal convention. But, sure. Low heel or high toe. Next question.

            a mid heel a flat

            Yes, where the heel and toe are on more or less equal footing (hah), we call those flats. If the entire foot is on a raised platform, we call those platforms. If it’s a platform with a raised heel, we call those platform heels.

            Lots of heels are styled so that most of the heel blends in with the shoe. It has nothing to do with the style. Pumps, stillettos, boots, wedges, kittens. Hell, I’ve seen high heeled converse. If it is women’s footwear with a raised heel, the blanket term is heels. High heels if they are especially high, as Ron’s are. But not for men. So why, I ask, are we sticking our necks out to deny this double standard?

            Now, let’s stop pretending we are members of an alien lizard species that do not understand human language conventions. We’re talking about a man that took a normal pair of boots that are 5 sizes too big, shoved a couple fancy doorstoppers in them to make himself appear taller, and is now parading around and playing pretend with his floppy toes and comically large kankles like a little boy that got into his mother’s shoe closet. And somehow instead of pointing and laughing we’re managing to have an even sillier argument about what to call the ill-fitting homebrew contraptions.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.worldEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

      What’s hilarious is that heels started as a military thing- men who were cavalry would wear them so their feet wouldn’t slip through stirrups as easily.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      I first saw them called heels a while ago. However, it’s specifically because he’s insecure about his height, so they’re height boosters in particular. They aren’t for style like heels typically are.

  • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    102·
    1 year ago

    Another example of how the cons are the biggest snowflakes - this headline in addition to the one about donnie’s small “hands”, again.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      The guy is literally a Guantanamo Bay torturer - I’d say the MAGA crowd is going to go nuts for him.

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’m fine with it so long as it’s not something that they’re putting out themselves like an inflammatory comment to gather support or if it tarnishes their reputation. This just makes him look insecure and the butt of the joke.