Going Fourth

Fooled ya, didn't I?

Let’s see, where was I?

Well…I was blogging about Donald J. Trump, the novelty act—and then the novelty wore off.

There was plenty to make fun of, for a while—all that low-hanging fruit: the ghastly apricot skin, the forest creature curled up on his head, the Mussolini-esque posturing, the astounding (but proud) ignorance and incuriosity, the absurd boasting, the bombast, the weaselly immediate family and the mortified wife, the brazen cupidity, Mar-a-Lago…

Trump as a subject was ripe for ridicule, but then he grew stale. What more was there to say about him? Outside of the caricature, there was nothing there. Soon enough, “the people” would see that their experiment wasn’t working, and Trump would be shown the door. So I hung up my pen. Why bother?

I should have remembered another mis-estimation I’d made, way back on the day in December in 1979 when Dick Vitale debuted as a color man on an ESPN telecast of a college basketball game.

My friend and I looked on in stupefaction as Vitale unloaded his whole bag of tricks, or tics: the splayed hands, the popping eyes and bobbing head, the cuckoo-clock fervor, the bawling of inanities (“He’s a diaper dandy”, “Get a t. o., baby!”), the orgasmic moans of delight (“Ohhhhhhhh”) at plays he admired, the fawning over coaches, upon whom he bestowed grandiose monikers (“The General”). 

We assumed he’d be gone the next week.

Vitale and Trump, of course, have little in common besides the bluster, but just as Vitale has sullied college basketball for me, Trump has tainted…well, just about everything he’s laid his greasy little fingers on.   

One of the amusing aspects of Trump as a newly minted President was the deer-in-the-headlights look he wore. Now that he’s gotten used to it, however, he’s decided he likes the job, and he shows no inclination to leave—ever. He speaks wistfully of the idea of president for life, but failing that, he’d take the 16 years he believes FDR served.

On this the Fourth of July, when all our thoughts are high-flown, I’d like to think that I’m renewing my devotion to one of those pesky ideals that Trump would dearly love to do away with: freedom of speech. But maybe I just like to insult people. And maybe I’ll get bored again.

“Liberty means responsibility,” said George Bernard Shaw. “That is why most men dread it.” (He meant women, too.) I’ll admit it: responsibility has never been one of my strong suits. (I’ve never voted, for example.) But I can see clearly enough that, as the headline to an op-ed piece in today’s Washington Times says, “The fight against Trump is a battle for freedom,” so what better day to rejoin the fray?

I’ll fight Trump with the one tool at my disposal, and trust in the words of Mark Twain: “Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.”