Channeling childhood

When The New York Times reported that Donald Trump regularly watches as much as eight hours of television a day, the average American was undoubtedly gratified by this evidence that our President is, indeed, a populist at heart. “That’s almost as much as I watch,” Joe Q. Public must have thought.

The news also explains why Trump is battier than a bed louse. If three or four straight hours of soap operas daily can render the typical housewife certifiably insane, think of what twice that amount of Fox News could do.

Other than that, I consider it encouraging to know that our Chief Execrableness is parked in front of the boob tube, like an intractable child, for the better part of each day, instead of at his desk signing things or out making speeches.

Still, wouldn’t it be nice if our number one TV addict occasionally gleaned something useful from his habit?

Trump is just four years older than me, so, assuming that he watched as much TV as a lad as I did--what else was there to do back then?--I’m guessing that his and my viewing histories are essentially the same. (Of course, there’s always the possibility that Trump at age ten was already an entrepreneur, busy carving his name on treehouses and cadging nickels from other kids and never paying them back, and not holed up in his living room watching TV.)  Most of the shows from our childhood can be found in reruns on cable now; it might be salutary for Mr. Trump to take a jog or two down memory lane and see what might rise, however fleetingly, to the surface. Here are a few recommendations.

The Roy Rogers Show (1951-57). “The King of the Cowboys” never bragged about that nickname, never treated anyone unfairly (he invariably let the bad guys draw their guns first), never stopped smiling, and never had a single hair get out of place, even during his frequent fistfights (which he never initiated). He and his wife, Dale, who sang “Happy Trails” at the end of each episode, were loving partners and collaborators in the fight to bring justice to all.

The Adventures of Superman (1952-58). Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent, was the most powerful man in the world but never let on.  As Superman, he treated all women with the utmost courtesy, and though he had many an opportunity to take advantage of Lois Lane, he never even considered it, even though she threw herself at him whenever they met. The show honored the power of the press--Clark was a reporter--and the value of that institution. The Daily Planet was the heartbeat of Metropolis.

The Andy Griffith Show (1960-68). Andy was sheriff, but always let everyone else have the credit. Barney was insecure and blustery, but had a heart of pure gold. When Opie cheats another kid in a trade, Andy realizes he’s about to do the same thing, and refuses to do it.

Dragnet (the original, 1951-59). “Just the facts,” as Joe Friday would say. 

Sorry for being sorry

Following President Trump’s lead in his rehashing of the “Access Hollywood” incident, I’d like to make an announcement to all the people I’ve ever had to apologize to:

Never mind.

All those things I supposedly said or did that offended you? Didn’t do them, never said them. Someone must have been impersonating me.

Actually, my stance is even more foolproof than Trump’s. Since you’ve got nothing on tape, I’m denying that I ever spoke or acted out of line, to anyone. As far as I’m concerned, the slate is clean.

Why all the apologies, then? Well, it must have been that either I misunderstood what I was being accused of, or I somehow wanted to mollify the aggrieved party. Call it “smoothing ruffled feathers.”

Of course, Donald Trump apologizes only once in a blue moon, but I think he should employ the other half of this new and ingenious strategy toward resolving a lot of other messes he’s gotten himself into. For instance, he could tell Kim “Rocket Man” Jong-Un that he never said we’d rain down “fire and fury”--what he said was we’d rain down “Fiats and Ferraris” (someone tampered with the tape!), and as for “the likes of which the world has never seen,” he could say they’d be Facebook “likes.”

The Trump “base” will love it. When the President says “Who you gonna believe, your own eyes and ears, or me?” it’ll be no contest.

So now, Trump’s stance on the “Access Hollywood” video appears to be: “If I said it, it was only locker-room talk. But I doubt if I said it. It doesn’t sound like my voice.”

That gets him off the sexual-predator hook, in his mind, and frees him to give his support to Roy Moore. Judge Moore, like Trump himself, is the victim of a vast media conspiracy.

Moore might get elected yet, with or without Trump’s support, but I believe he should seal the deal by apologizing to all the women who’ve accused him. He could say that all his interactions with adolescent girls were only horseplay, not foreplay. Then, after he’s swept into Congress, he could eventually claim that he never apologized at all.

A clean slate.  

Thanks for the memories

It’s Thanksgiving eve, and a grateful nation is preparing to give thanks to the Giver of All Things -- Donald J. Trump. Besides the roller-coaster sensations of great stretches of queasiness interspersed with moments of pure terror, our President has bestowed upon us in bountiful measure one of life’s greatest blessings: something to laugh at.  

Our Kidder-in-Chief kicked off the show by declaring that his Inauguration crowd was the largest in history, that his win was a “massive” landslide, and that he would have won the popular vote if it hadn’t been for the 3 million immigrants who voted illegally. People chuckled, and he was off and running.

After three months at the helm, he said that no administration in history had ever accomplished more in its first 90 days. That was a knee-slapper, something like Genghis Khan declaring that no horde had ever slaughtered more people than his.  

He told us that we’d put up a wall and the Mexicans would pay for it. Har de har har. He said that the IRS was auditing his tax returns and that he’d hand them over when they were done, and then he said that he wouldn’t hand them over after all. Funny, because he’d hounded Barack Obama about showing his birth certificate, in the interest of “transparency.”  

He called the White House “a dump.” He told a racy story at a Boy Scout convention. Pure slapstick.

He visited Corpus Christi, site of a hurricane, and crowed “What a turnout!” to the crowd hoping to hear him discuss helping them. He tossed paper towels to the crowd in Puerto Rico. His comedy can be physical, too!

He visited the Holocaust Museum in Israel, and signed the guest book, “It’s a great honor to be here with all my friends. So amazing + will Never Forget!” What a guy!

He went to Africa and referred to the non-existent country of Nambia. He said that he’d spoken to “the President of the Virgin Islands,” which is he himself, Donald J. Trump. He flirted with the French president’s wife: “You’re in good shape,” he told her. “Beautiful.” Amusing to everyone, perhaps, except his own wife, who was standing right there?

He said that there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville. He praised the president of the Philippines, a self-confessed murderer. He said Roy Moore’s got a point.

He said he’d be dating his daughter if she wasn’t his daughter. He praised Vladimir Putin, over and over, but said that NFL players were disrespecting the flag.

He said that Frederick Douglass was doing an amazing job. He hired Anthony Scaramucci!

For these and many other comedic moments, we are thankful. President Trump is the gift that keeps on giving.      

Checking in

It's 3 a.m. in America

It’s been six months since I weighed in on President Trump; maybe I thought he’d have a short-lived reign--as short as his stubby little fingers. But here we are, almost a year into our national nightmare.

Well, actually, it’s a bad dream only to some of us. He still has his “base” (how apropos a word), in whose eyes and minds (?) he can do no wrong. That constituency is holding steady at 35 percent of the populace, a number that corresponds, roughly, to the percentage of Amurricans who seethed over the very idea of a black man in the White House.

Trump promised to fight for the interests of all those who’d been “left behind,” but thus far his Presidency has been wholly devoted not only to leaving the little man (and woman) behind, but to plowing him under. The Republican tax plan (or boondoggle, to be more precise), the latest piece of criminal mischief intended to be shoved down our throats, will benefit the rich and hurt the not-rich, almost everyone agrees, even the 227 craven GOP representatives who voted for it Thursday.

“I’m willing to pay more (taxes),” Trump said last May, and in September he said that his tax plan was “not good for me, believe me.” True, the measure that passed this week will benefit him and his sleazy family by only about a billion dollars.   

But what did we expect from someone who looked at the Presidency of the United States as a money-making opportunity?

Since this was transparently so from the beginning, why did so many people vote for him? Well, anything’s better than Hillary, right? Even a nuclear war, I guess.

But why did 53 percent of white women decide to vote for this vulgar misogynist and admitted pussy-grabber? As a lark, maybe? After all, Trump wasn’t really real, only reality-TV real. Is the spectacle of him now unraveling in the White House still amusing?

In fact, it’s not hard to get people to do and say things that aren’t in their own best interests. How else do you explain the women in Alabama standing up for Roy Moore? It’s not that he might have done the things he’s been accused of doing, it’s just that, in the bigger picture, they don’t matter. We’ll excuse his individual peccadilloes, these women seem to be saying, because he’s fighting the good fight against institutionalized godlessness.

Trump, of course, hasn’t joined the debate over Moore--he has his base to think about--but he couldn’t resist tweeting about Al Franken. He couldn’t resist, because he couldn’t bear to think that we might be thinking about Al Franken, and not thinking about Donald Trump. That’s the only conclusion to draw, since both his tweet, and his decision to tweet, were senseless.

That’s the rule of thumb, now, about the rule of Trump: nothing about it makes sense.

        

A boy's best friend is himself

We’ve heard a fair amount about Donald J. Trump’s pop, Fred -- who set his son up in business and bailed him out of a losing proposition at least once down through the years  – but what about his mom?  

Show the swirl, girl!

Mary Anne (MacLeod) Trump was an illegal immigrant from Scotland who married Fred Trump in 1936 and dutifully bore five children while staying, more or less, in the background as her husband and then her more flamboyant son plied their trade in the male-dominated world of Big Business.

Active in philanthropy, Ma Trump moved in high social circles, and went in for ostentation, not the least in her hairstyles. Her favorite – one she passed along to her son – was a distinctive “orange swirl.”

“Part of the problem I’ve had with women,” our Commander-in-Chief has said, “is in having to compare them to my incredible mother.”

As always, Trump’s treatment of any subject is in reference to himself. Our President’s version of “M-O-T-H-E-R,” the schmaltzy song recorded by Eddy Arnold and scores of others, might go something like this:

“M is for the Millions who adore me;

 O means Only I can fix our ills;

 T is for the Throngs that turn out for me,    

 H is for my HUGE array of skills;    

 E is for Enormous crowds that love me;

 R means Right, and right I always am;

Put them all together, and think of me;

And my motto: Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am.”

A Dickens of a leader

Harold Skimpole is a character in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. “He had more the appearance in all respects of a damaged young man, rather than a well-preserved older one,” Dickens writes. “His hair (was) carelessly disposed, and his neckerchief loose and flowing…”

Skimpole has still more in common with our President. “I am a child, you know!” he often exclaims.

Like a child, Skimpole’s wants are simple, among them “…music, mutton, coffee…fruit in the season…and a little claret.” But these simple pleasures are to be had, we see, at others’ expense. And if anyone should object to this state of affairs, Skimpole’s answer is something like: I am what I am. In short, Skimpole is, like a child, a perfect egoist.  

What are the characteristics of a typical child?

A lack of responsibility. You let others bear the burden of your existence, or, if you happen to be Commander-in-Chief, you blame someone else—anyone else—for your failures.

A vengeful temperament. If someone criticizes you, you criticize them back, and make sure and out-criticize them, even if you must resort to ad hominem attacks (e.g., if an actress says your world view is dangerous, you call her “overrated”).

A love of loud noises. The child relishes firecrackers and cherry bombs, while the man-child wants to “bomb the shit out of ISIS.”

Boastfulness. The child puts himself at the center of every experience.

Exaggeration. Every new thing is the “greatest” or the “biggest” to the child.

Love of play. Sports, games and recreation are central to a child’s life, and even when he can no longer run or jump, the “grown-up” man craves play—so there is golf.

Disgusting personal habits.  The child gives noogies, uses boogers as missiles and proudly produces armpit farts; the stunted man no less proudly brags of grabbing women by their privates.    

On the other hand, Harold Skimpole differs from Donald J. Trump in one important way: Skimpole abhors having money. He knows nothing of it, and he wants to keep it that way.

Another rotten orange

So, to complete our character assassination, we’ll turn to another novel by Dickens, David Copperfield. Here we find Uriah Heep, the consummate villain, who is also pure ego, but careful enough to try and conceal it. (“I am the ‘umblest person going,” Heep tells young Copperfield.) Heep’s craven grasping for money and prestige has left him physically deformed, it seems. Despite his constant avowals of his “’umbleness”, Heep has greed written all over him.

Our President, you could say, is half-Skimpole, half-Heep.  

Bartlett defines Trump

Some of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, applied to our Commander-in-Chief:

Maybe he'll get stuck down therre

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson. And we all know, because he constantly reminds us, that Donald Trump’s mind isn’t little. It’s yuge! He knows more than the generals about the military; he knows more than anyone in the world about taxes, about banking, about money, about “the system,” about trade, about infrastructure, about “the horrors of nuclear.” Also about changing his mind.

“Stone walls do not a prison make…” – Richard Lovelace. That’s why we have to have more actual prisons, and why Mr. Prez Trump enthusiastically supports private prisons, whose stock has been soaring since candidate Trump endorsed them during his campaign. The federal prison population has been steadily falling over the last several years, even though the U. S. still leads the world. If we’re going to make America great again, we’ve got to stuff our prisons to the max, and make sure that the incarcerated stay put, something that’s more easily facilitated when stockholders’ profit and loss are involved.

“Golf is a good walk spoiled.”—Mark Twain. But it’s a nice ride, for Trump, unlike the ride he’s giving us, the humble taxpayers. Each Trumpian golf vacation to Mar-a-Lago costs us about $3.6 million; so far Trump has taken 14 of them. But let’s not begrudge our beleaguered leader a little time away from the worries of the Office. I say we encourage him to play golf every day, and let someone else take a swing at running the country.

“Nothing is certain except death and taxes.” – Ben Franklin. Trump has proven half the adage wrong: what could be more uncertain than a Trump tax disclosure?

“Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” – Winston Churchill. You could say that about Trump’s Russian relations. Was his affair with Putin a dalliance or a full-blown bromance? What was Russia’s motivation for interfering in the Presidential election? And how much does it cost to have a Russian whore pee on a bed?

“All children are essentially criminal.” – Denis Diderot. President Trump’s grown sons, Eric and Don Jr. (Weasel and Slinky), are now at the helm of their father’s business empire. Eric has visited the Dominican Republic to oversee a project, despite the Trumpster’s pledge to undertake no new overseas deals, and also to Uruguay, a trip which cost taxpayers about $100,000. The kids’ old man has refused to divest himself of his assets, while pledging that everything will be on the up-and-up.

“Truth is stranger than fiction.” – Lord Byron. President Trump has taken this old saw to heart, resolving to stick to fiction whenever possible.         

Don roasts the Donald

You're yuge, Donny

The ghost of Don Rickles meets the spooky Donald Trump, and fires up a one-man roast:

“Hiya, Donald, how ya doin’? You’re looking good, for a wax dummy. I get the idea, though—you’re coming in after Obama, so orange is the new black, right?

“What’s that on your head, though? Can I pet it?

“And that tie. You could land a small plane on it. It’s ‘uge!

“I tell you, I’ve known you a long time, Donny, and I can say from the bottom of my heart: I’ve never liked you. You’ve always been a schmuck. I guess it’s true what they say: Any nobody can grow up to be President.

“So now you’re living in the White House—you gotta like that name, huh?—unless you’re staying at Mar-a-Lago, which means “No coloreds allowed,” I understand.

“Actually, you’ve got a black man in your cabinet, Ben Carson, which proves that you’re no bigot—you’ll hire anybody, as long as they’re stupider than you.

“At least when Doctor Ben blows up his department, you can always say the operation was a success, even though the patient died.

“How’s your golf game, Don? How’s your putter? I hear you’re short on a lot of holes?

“How’s your wife? She’s serving a term, too—I’d call it a prison term, but at least in prison there’s sex.

“What about your son, the one with the misspelled name? There’s one “R” in Baron, Don, ya moron, like there’s one “P” in “tap.”

“And those two other boys—sharp as a tack, for a couple of ghouls. You can tell they really love you, Don—like a barnacle loves a whale.

“Kidding aside, Donny, you don’t have to be a good speller to be President. You just have to be smart. So how in hell did you get elected, ya nosebag?

“They say you have to have smart people around you, at least. So why Steve Bannon? Hey, Steve, have another drink and shut up.

“You might be a cretin, Don, but I gotta admit you always see more than others do. Like all those people at your inauguration.

“I’ll say one thing, though, Don—you’re consistent. You’ve always been a loser. What kind of a sad sack puts his name on a building?

“Those little circles you make with your fingers when you’re giving a speech? Zeroes, I assume?

“You’ve got your critics, Don, but just go right on calling them the losers. You’re President, and they’re not.

“So congratulations, Don—it couldn’t have happened to a creepier guy.” 

Mr. Trump goes to Washington

Hi, Abe. My wife's crazy, too

In 1939, director Frank Capra made a movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” in which a starry-eyed idealist (played by Jimmy Stewart) in love with democracy runs up against the forces of greed, corruption, hypocrisy – you name it – as a fledgling Senator from an unnamed state out west.

Smith’s first name is Jefferson, but his idol is Abe Lincoln; he gets choked up just by gawking at the Lincoln Memorial (“Gee whiz,” he splutters. “That’s Mr. Lincoln, there he is.”) He’s read all the storybooks, and he arrives in our capitol brandishing the childlike notion that “There’s no compromise with the truth.”

In the famous filibuster sequence, Smith proclaims that “Men should hold it (liberty) up in front of them every single day of their lives,” to a blasé body of colleagues. They eventually get up and leave, and Smith is left talking to just the President of the Senate and the audience in the gallery. It looks like one of those lost causes that Joseph Paine, the other, senior Senator from Smith’s state, used to say were the only causes worth fighting for. But when Smith finally passes out from exhaustion, Paine breaks down and confesses his complicity with the corrupt powers-that-be. In the end, Smith is triumphant (although comatose).

Could such a movie be made today? Sure, with a few changes.

In “Mr. Trump Goes to Washington,” a naïve (“Nobody knew it was so complicated”) young man of 70 comes to Washington with the determination to do big – yuge – things (“Make America great again”).

Just as Mr. Smith’s primary objective is to build a camp for boys, Mr. Trump’s is to build something, too: a wall. And just as Smith’s dream project is stymied at every turn, so is Mr. Trump’s – first by the recalcitrant Mexican government, then by those pesky budget constraints.

Even so, Mr. Trump has a fine time in the White House, signing executive orders and holding them up for everyone to see, and firing off tweets in the early-morning hours to entertain his base. (Smith, too, represented the common man.)

Mr. Trump admires Lincoln, also. “He was a man of great intelligence, which most presidents would be” he enthuses. “But he was a man of great intelligence, but he was also a man that did something that was a very vital thing to do at that time. Ten years before or twenty years before, what he was doing would never even have been thought possible. So he did something that was a very important thing to do, and especially at that time.”

Like Jefferson Smith, Donald J. Trump is a man who will not give up. When the wall looks as if it will not get off the ground, he takes his lost cause to the people. At a rally somewhere, he rails at length against the dishonest media and the lies that are sabotaging his project. “The wall will be a beautiful thing,” he tells the crowd. “It will be a great wall, the greatest wall in the history of the world, the Great Wall of Trump…”

As Trump rhapsodizes, he suddenly keels over, from a testosterone overload. As he is carried from the podium, his fans pledge to send in their nickels, dimes and quarters. Mr. Trump will get his wall, as Mr. Smith gets his camp for boys.

While the director of this remake might have to pay handsomely for a star of Jimmy Stewart’s magnitude, on the other hand he’ll save on casting for Mr. Trump’s love interest. That would be Mr. Trump. 

Nobody does it better

“Nobody knows the Bible better than I do,” Prez Trump proclaimed back in pre-

His knowledge is yuge--yuge as his you-know-what 

Armaggedon days, when he was courting the evangelical bloc of voters. That statement’s only logical, given that Trump undoubtedly believes that he’s the one who wrote it.  

He quoted a verse from Second Corinthians, but cited “Two Corinthians,” to the amusement of the fun-loving crowd at Liberty University. He later blamed Tony Perkins—not the Psycho guy, but the president of the Family Research Council, who’d written out some crib notes for Trump. “Tony Perkins wrote that out for me,” Trump explained while throwing Perkins under the church bus. “He actually wrote out ‘2’, he wrote out the number ‘2’. I said, ‘Well, Tony has to know better than anyone.”   

That’s not necessarily a contradiction, giving someone else authority after you’d already claimed it, if you consider that many authors leave their books behind them once they’re written.

“Nobody respects women more than I do,” Trump has repeatedly trumpeted. That’s true, in a way. Trump has pledged to “love, honor and obey” a woman, not just once, but three times. You might liken his reverence for the female of the species to the line in the old Steve Martin routine: “I want to put women up on a pedestal,” Martin said. “The better to look up her dress.”

“Nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world,” our credulousness-taxing Commander-in-Chief” has said. And if you have such knowledge, why dilute it by giving it to others? Hold on to those tax returns, by all means.

“Nobody knows more about infrastructure than I do,” the Wigged One has boasted. More towers, resorts and golf courses are absolutely essential to a vibrant economy, of course, but Trump also realizes that new bridges, railroads, power plants and schools are important, not to mention excellent opportunities for slapping one’s name on something big. We’re looking forward most of all to Trump Dam.

“Nobody builds better walls than me,” Trump asserts, presumably not ironically referring to the walls he’s already put up as President. The Great Wall of Trump will be his piece de resistance, and not nearly as expensive as experts predict, if Trump succeeds in getting Mexicans to build it—and pay us.

“There’s nobody who understands the horror of nuclear better than me,” says Trump, whose skin does look somewhat irradiated. The horror he envisions, however, is probably the prospect of having no one around to praise him.

That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t pull the trigger, despite the warnings of the generals he knows so much more than. A nuclear holocaust, after all, would provide him the ultimate construction project: Trumpopolis.  

Dancing with the Devil

When I was in high school, we had a ceremony in the football stadium one spring to elect the Prom Queen and her court. The nominees had to walk out to the center of the football field to receive the acclamation of the crowd. One of the girls nominated (by some jokester) was the ugliest girl in the senior class—in the entire school, for that matter.

As the poor girl—I’ll call her Jane—trudged out onto the field, she was bowed down by the gales of sardonic laughter. When she was elected, by the volume of cheers, as Senior Attendant to the Queen, she began to weep.

It was funny, in a perverse sort of way—for ten seconds or so. Then we realized what we’d done.

Nobody in our school knew Jane very well, or at all. She was silent and withdrawn—not like those homely girls who made up for their looks with "personality." Her predominant—her only--facial expressions were a scowl and a glare, which she returned to anyone whose eyes even innocently or inadvertently fell on her. I’d never heard her utter a word.    

Jane, as it turned out, gamely showed up on Prom Night, and went through with the whole grim charade, with a scowl and a glare. Jane was Jane—an ugly duckling to the end.

There was an end, at least. Jane was royalty for a night, and then we were done with her.

Donald J. Trump is the Ugly Prom Queen from Hell.

Trump’s candidacy for President was a grotesque novelty, and his election the upshot of an obscene joke, one that was carried on to excruciating lengths. After Trump was swept into office by our collective bad taste, we held our breaths until Inauguration Day, hoping that our man would become more “Presidential” in the interim.

It was an untenable hope, and we knew it. We all knew what we were getting, to a point, with Trump: an ego-driven, ignorant, incurious, humorless, preening peacock--in short, a narcissistic slob. Then we watched and recoiled in horror as, over the next few months, the true extent of the man’s moral bankruptcy was revealed.  

As well as being a liar of monumental proportions, Trump is a hollow braggart and a poltroon. He dreams up baseless accusations and leaves it for others to sort them out. He takes credit for what others have accomplished, but shirks responsibility for his failures; if he even acknowledges them as failures, he makes sure there’s always a fall guy around. Without ever having read a book, he fancies himself the smartest person in any room. Being suspicious of “the arts,” he’d like to abolish them.  

Sometimes when I think about Trump I think of Jane (who also had orange hair and complexion, by the way). What would it be like to live for years with someone who was ugly inside and out? (Which is not to deny the possibility that Jane might have led a perfectly lovely inner life.)

I guess I’ll have to wait and find out.