September 20, 2019--Dancing With Spicy

I assume you do not watch Dancing With the Stars. On the other hand don't make that assumption about me. In fact, I rarely miss an episode. 

I do not watch a lot of network TV. Actually, basically none. But there I am every Monday night during DWTS season keeping an eye on the time so as not to miss even a minute of silliness. That silliness provides a couple of hours of distraction from Trump stuff and the intensifying twinges of aging.

Since you likely do not tune in, here's how DWTS works:

The program each season starts out with about a dozen "stars." Stars in quotes as almost all are either has-beens seeking a final turn in the spotlight or never in their day stars of the first magnitude. DWTS stars include Bachelorette contestants, gimpy retired football players, and the like.

They are teamed up with professional dancers who during the week leading up to Mondays teach their star partners enough of a semblance of dancing to get through 90-second routines. Remarkably, some of those the judges and at-home audience vote to continue get to be pretty good. Which, when I think about my own clumsy moves on the dance floor, is amazing. 

The initial group typically includes at least one star who has no physical aptitude whatsoever. They are there for comic relief and over the seasons have included Cloris Leachman, Mr. T, Governor Rick Perry, and Geraldo. As such, they tend to receive low scores and are typically voted off during the first few weeks.

This season filling the clown role is Trump's first press secretary, Sean Spicer. A perfect choice on multiple levels. He can't dance at all and he didn't need to stretch very far to come off as a joke. He had plenty of time to perfect that role during his daily White House press briefings. And in case anyone missed the point that he was also a malevolent presidential apologist, Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live got it right when she imitated him, including using a motorized podium to mow down the gathered press corps.

Best of all, Spicer didn't realize he was there for comic relief. He thought it was because he's a cool person, which makes his assignment to the clown role even funnier. The joke, it turns out is on him.

Monday, Spicer, dressed in a neon green Desi-Arnaz-style Babaloo shirt, danced a version of a salsa. It was so awful that he received the second lowest scores, one point higher than ex-NBA basketball player and Kardashian husband, Lamar Odom. Also there for comic relief, no longer, I assume, living in a Ls Vegas brothel.

Trumpian that he still is, Spicy sensed that the Deep State and satanic forces were responsible for his low scores. He especially blamed the judges in his after-the-show Twitter posting. He tweeted--

“Clearly those judges are not going to be with me. Let’s send a message to #Hollywood that those of us who stand for #Christ won’t be discounted.”

And here I thought his appearance was for comic relief. I didn't realize it was about the Second Coming.

July 25, 2017--Rudy & The Mooch

Desperate, Donad Trump and Republicans in the Senate are pulling out the stops--

First, there is the psychodrama playing out in the White House communications operation.

They pushed poor Sean Spicer so hard that he finally, in frustration and humiliation, resigned. Not only did he have to endure the mockery brilliantly served up by Melissa McCarthy on Saturday Night Live, with her motorized lectern, he also had to endure insults from his boss who couldn't get over Spicy's pudginess and ill-fitting suits. It didn't help that those off-the-rack outfits were a muddy brown and didn't include a pocket square.

So off he went to be replaced by Anthony (The Mooch) Scaramucci. After hijacking poor Sarah Huckabee Sander's live-on-TV news conference on the first day of her being named press secretary, after his overlong and obsequious "I'll-take-a-question-or-two" Q&A with the press, he asked her to make sure that the person who did his hair and makeup continued to be available to him.

So we know what he's about--in his bromance with The Donald ("I love the guy!") he knows the Boss will be checking out how he looks on TV. The good news is that he has the hair and bespoke outfits to keep Trump happy at least for a week or two.

Speaking of bespoke, did you notice what son-in-law Jared Kushner was wearing yesterday morning when he was set to testify before the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee? For the "prince of having it both ways" (called that in the Sunday Times by Frank Bruni), he knew who was watching on TV. From the threads and hair alone, we know daddy-in-law was for an hour or two feeling all was right with the world. Everyone was looking good. (The president in the meantime was continuing to swell up like a Macy' parade balloon.)

In the meantime, showing contempt for his own caucus, GOP Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell,  was getting ready to have his minions vote for a health care reform bill the contents of which were still, hours before the vote, unknown to them.

Would it be straight repeal or repeal-and-replace and if it was that, replace with what? Doesn't matter. What matters is that they vote for something. Anything. Since he and Trump do not care if what might come before the Senate will kick 30 or "only" 20 million covered now off the health care rolls, let's just vote and then move on to what really counts--a White House beer party for Republican senators and then the signing ceremony.

To make sure the vote goes his way, McConnell held off until poor John McCain could get out of his hospital bed to be trotted out just days after brain cancer surgery to vote yes, again for anything that has a chance to be passed. That McCain, who has his own existential healthcare issues to deal with, would allow himself to be used this way about such an issue, is a sad commentary on McCain himself who has gotten away with pretending to be a maverick during his too-long career in the Senate.

Sorry, senator, I know I am being insensitive, but you are bringing this final legacy down upon yourself. What you are too dramatically going along with will result in the premature death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans and even in your desperate condition you need to be called out for this act of, yes, cowardice.

Then there's poor Jeff Sessions. While he clings to political life it appears that Donald Trump and his nepotistic family are already making plans for what to do after they torture the attorney general into resigning.

Here's what they appear to be coming up with--

Sessions is twisting slowly in the wind (to resurrect an old Watergate trope) and we know will soon, Spicer like, say enough and resign. This should conveniently occur when the Senate is on its well-deserved 8th vacation of the year and Trump will make an interim appointment--name a new attorney general without requiring a vote of the so-called upper chamber. He should be able to find someone compliant enough to allow him to do this and in return will do the Big Guy's bidding and put the screws to special counsel Mueller.

Who, you might wonder, is so eager to please Donald Trump that he is willing to destroy his reputation by becoming his lapdog?

That's an easy one--Rudy!

So here's what we'll then have--a New York City all-star team of sycophants. Rudy, the Mooch, and all sorts of Goldman people in his cabinet or close-in advisors and flunkies.

To make this a trifecta of Tristate flunkiness, let's think about what Trump might come up with for Chris Crispy (as my mother used to call him). One thing we know, Christie will need to get a whole new wardrobe. If he's going to work for Trump, it's time for him to move on from the Men's Warehouse.

February 13, 2017--Jack On "Sane Republicans"

"I read what you wrote the other day about how ridicule has the power to bring Trump down."

Once again, Jack was calling. "That could be true," he said, "It can be powerful when it gets under the skin of someone as thin-skinned as Trump."

"That's what I'm thinking," I said.

"On the other hand," Jack said, "a lot of Democrats are thinking it has to be 'sane Republicans' like John McCain and Lindsay Graham who need to step up and begin to openly take Trump on. Everyone knows they hate him, but so far they have been muted in their criticism. This makes sense to me. You can see them seething and at some point Trump'll do something so outrageous, there will be some sort of smoking gun, maybe from the Russians' secret files, and that will signal the beginning of the end."

"You're beginning to sound like one of us," I said.

"Not one of your kind, but maybe I'm one of those sane Republicans." I knew if we were seated across from each other at the Bristol Diner he'd be winking at me.

He added, "I watched Saturday Night Live on Saturday, knowing they'd be going after Trump again, to check out how potent their humor is."

"So what did you think?"

"I thought the Melissa McCarthy takedown of Sean Spicer was the best of the three political sketches. He's a very angry man and she got to the heart of that. And was savagely funny. One more week and Trump will ready to pull the plug on him. Not just to end the mocking but because he's jealous of Spicer stealing the spotlight. I read some place that his daily press briefings, which the cable news people are carrying live, are getting higher ratings than General Hospital and the other soaps. Not too mention Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. All are seeing their ratings at all time highs"

"People can't seem to get enough of Trump," I sighed. "In any form."

"But then the skit about Kellyanne Conway, where she goes after CNN's Jake Tapper the same predatory way Sharon Stone did to Michael Douglas in Basic Instinct, was so vicious that it went beyond humor and came out on the dark side. It wasn't really as funny as Steve Bannon the week before when he played the Grim Reaper. That was very dark but funny. I guess with comedy there are no limits. But if I'm thinking about political effectiveness--and I do think the SNL people are out to bring Trump down--for me that bit didn't work."

"I felt the same way," I said, "It crossed too many lines to have much impact, though I did think it was bold."

"You're getting to my main point and the reason I called."

"I was wondering about that."

"Take the last sketch where Baldwin played Trump appealing his travel ban to the courts. Not the Ninth Circuit or the Supreme Court but, of course, The People's Court. A reality show court. This should have been funny but I felt it was predictable and more manufactured than inspired. To be consistently funny you need to avoid slipping into into routines and cliches. Things have to be fresh and the Alec Baldwin version of Trump is getting to be overexposed. My sense is that after another week or two people will begin to tune out. Ditto for McCarthy's Sean Spicer. This week the innovation was to motorize the podium. Pretty thin stuff."

"I also was thinking been-there-done-that and started to nod off."

"So, from an effectiveness perspective, SNL, as fresh as it seemed three weeks ago, is feeling stale and a little boring. Boring is the opposite of funny."

"Here's one more thing," Jack said, "I'm thinking that the Trump act is also wearing thin. He too is in danger of slipping into predictability. His act is wearing thin. This could be a good thing--to rein Trump in--or a bad thing--we'll stop paying attention to what he's up to. He might be more dangerous out of the spotlight than basking in it."

February 10, 2017--Ridicule

Thursday morning we finally made it down for breakfast at 10:00. At least an hour later than usual. We lingered in bed as the snowstorm intensified. It was magical to watch our terrace turn into a giant snow globe. And we also lingered, in truth, because so much was going on. With and among Donald Trump and his band of co-conspirators.

By 10:00 AM the following had already happened--

In a series of three tweets he savaged John McCain for criticizing the ill-fated Navy SEAL operation in Yemen. McCain, he raged has been "losing so long that he doesn't know how to win."

Senators from both parties who had informal one-on-one meetings the day before with Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, were quoting him as saying that he was "demoralized" and "disheartened" by Trump's overnight tweets and comments that disparaged the federal courts. He made it known to the senators that he was comfortable with their quoting him directly.

I have been following these matters for decades and cannot recall anything even vaguely comparable.

Rona said, "That's because there has never previously been anyone like Trump in the White House. Even Nixon was more restrained in his assaults on the courts and never has a Supreme Court nominee allowed his words to be quoted publicly."

Trump took to mocking one of the senators who shared Garland's lament--Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal. In yet another tweet Trump blasted him for inflating his resumé in regard to his service in Vietnam, something Trump himself did when, after receiving four or five deferments, claimed he did his service in high school when he attended the New York Military Academy.

Then there was the Ivanka Trump flap. Trump began it himself when he called Nordstrom out for cancelling Ivanka's line of clothes. Trump said it was for political reasons, the store said it was because they weren't selling.

Brother Don, Jr., chimed in suggesting in a tweet of his own that shippers should boycott Nordstrom and signal they are doing so by cutting up and returning their credit cards.

Not to be outdone, favorite flunky Kellyanne Conway, while being interviewed on the inane "Fox and Friends" called for Trump supporters to "go buy Ivanka's stuff.  Doing so, as a government official, may be against the law. She was reportedly "counseled" for this infraction later in the day.

Finally, over coffee, wondering what this all means, Rona said, "I know how we can get rid of Trump."

"Impeachment?"

"No, resignation."

"No way but I'm interested in what you're thinking."

"Through ridicule."

"Say more."

"What's the one thing he craves the most?" She answered her own question, "To be in the center of things, in the spotlight, with all eyes on him while being adulated. That's why he's so obsessed with how he's faring in the polls, how large his crowds are at rallies and the Inauguration. That's why his touchstone no matter the purpose of the meeting is 'The Celebrity Apprentice.' He even began his comments at the Annual Prayer Breakfast by mocking the ratings Arnold Schwarzenegger was pulling after taking Trump's place as the host. 'Pray for his ratings,' he incredibly said."

"And so?"

"He thinks of himself as the entertainer or celebrity in chief. That's why he watches TV all the time. To see what people are saying about him. To be famous is his highest aspiration and that's why he's so protective of his image, his brand and can't stand it when late night talkshow hosts make fun of him or, much worse, how a show he used to appear on regularly, 'Saturday Night Live,' ridicules him mercilessly week after week."

"We don't watch it that much," I said, "But did the last few weeks. Via On Demand, and they sliced him up savagely, hilariously. Alec Baldwin has taken on his essence and the skit with Melissa McCarthy mocking his press secretary were works of comic genius. But I'm not entirely getting your point about the political impact of this."

"If all of these folks keep it up, Trump will not be able to appear in public. He certainly will not be viable in Manhattan at his favorite 21 Club or soon in Palm Beach. This would be like cutting off his oxygen supply. And so he'll wind up living alone in the White House. Don't underestimate the power of satire and ridicule. In his case, it could very well do him in."

"He'll resign?"

"That's what I'm thinking. Comedy as another of our checks and balances."