June 19, 2014--The Ego

The Donald is having problems with The Ego.

In Chicago six years ago, he opened his 92-story hotel and condominium. Everyone in town was sort of happy. They thought for Trump the architecture was restrained and even elegant. OK, maybe not elegant. This is The Donald after all and elegant and Trump do not go together in the same sentence. Though I just did it.

But at least it didn't look like Atlantic City, where we have the Trump, yes, Taj Mahal,  or, forgive me fellow New Yorkers, the hideously-gilded Trump Tower in Manhattan, right across from Tiffany. And, no one in Chicago wanted to say this openly for fear The Donald would get ideas, it didn't have his name--T-R-U-M-P--trumpeted on it as it is on everything else he owns, or, for a fee, sells his name.

Like the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas or the Trump Hotel and Towers in Waikiki, the Trump Towers in Istanbul or another Trump Towers in Pune, India.

He likes alliteration.

But just this week, to the chagrin of tasteful Chicagoans, Trump finished installing a 20-foot tall stainless steel, LED-backlit P to the facade to join the T, the R, the U, and the M.

The always colorful, Mayor Rahm said, "This is an architecturally tasteful building scarred by an architecturally tasteless sign."

The tasteful people of Pune said, "Ji."

What is it with these guys?

Trump is worth $2.7 billion according to Forbes and owns dozens of buildings, casinos, resorts, and golf courses. He even owns the Miss Universe pageant for God's sake. He needs his name on everything?

The answer is pathetically obvious.

When Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York State, he spent billions of taxpayers' dollars on new government buildings. This transformed a charming, sleepy state capital, full of historic buildings, into a version of soulless Brasilia. Some wags said Rocky had an Edifice Complex. Others, considering his private life, said it was all about his asserting that "Mine is bigger than yours."

Some say building on a grand scale and affixing one's name to what one owns is an attempt to make oneself immortal--the works will be there forever, millennia after one departs this mortal coil.

But then there is the Ozymandias problem.

Remember the lyric poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley? In my day, everyone in elementary school was required to memorize it and to ask, at that tender and innocent age, "Is that all there is?"

When contemplating the ruin of a 13th century BCE statue of Ramessesi II,  the poet writes--

And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.