In Elia Kazan and Budd Schulberg’s 1957 classic, A Face In The Crowd, we were given a prophetic peek at the growing connection between media and politics and, perhaps, a hint on how that can quickly turn sour when exposed to a little sunshine. In the film, an ambitious radio producer finds charming, homespun, Andy Griffith in a drunk tank and, promoting him as a refreshingly folksy good guy, puts him on the air. He then makes a deal for his own TV show and soars to stardom, building on his simple, wise, country-boy image. His ratings soar so high, he decides to use his domination of a growing fan base to endorse a presidential candidate, for pay. His celebrity nod brings a good chance of delivering the election.
His staff knows, however, that he is a mendacious, cruel, amoral fraud. His producer/girlfriend, disgusted with his lying manipulation of the clueless, adoring masses, decides to leave the cameras running one night, during the closing credits, while he, unaware that his mic is still live, belittles his chosen candidate, labels his adoring followers “idiots” and, essentially, reveals his true self. Finally, abandoned by everyone, and suffering from the lack of attention and affection he craves, he activates an applause machine in his empty house and drinks it in, all alone.
Why tell you this story? When I heard that the current oval office resident had not only single-handedly chosen the recipients of this years Kennedy Center (or is it now officially the Trump/Kennedy Center?) honors, but also named himself as host of the awards, I felt a surge of gleeful happiness. Admittedly, I may have been alone, but let me explain.
As host of the awards, he won’t be able to stop himself. Finally, the nation will see, live, the clinically demented and wandering ego-maniac, who can’t stop blathering about irrelevant slights and imagined triumphs long enough to even talk about the awardees. I picture a Face In The Crowd moment, a cold dose of reality, for us.
To date, there has been increasing evidence that his mind is slipping into dementia. In his meeting with European leaders, for example, he couldn’t identify the President of Finland, with whom he’d been talking, minutes before.
We do not, however, see his frighteningly long rants fully reported in the press. We need a big dose of the gibberish, flights of insanity, and inability to hold a cogent thought that he exhibits now, and which we see only in brief, edited, news flashes. We need to see him on those awards.
And then, we will likely not see, but can happily imagine, Trump sadly turning on his applause machine, alone and broken in an echoing, empty, Versailles-clone of a ballroom that he ordered grafted onto the white house. Bring it on!
Capital Prefix-ation
A prefix is a piece of a word, literally stuck on, or “affixed”, at the head of a word. Most times, the prefix is added in order to reverse the meaning of the word. We “stick on” un- or il- or dis- or non- and voila! A word now means its opposite.
I thought of this, while perusing Governor Newsom’s delicious mockery of you-know-who’s irrelevant capitalizations, and saw that we were being handed a very useful shorthand for recognizing the lies. To every word capitalized by the orange guy in the midst of a sentence, we simply need to add the prefix “dis-” or “non-“, in order to discover the truth. For instance, to the promise that labor statistics will finally be Honest and Accurate (a Tweet from the demented tweeter), simply read “dishonest” and “inaccurate”. Not that we read his tweets anymore, but it might make for a fun time.
Of course, when he capitalizes Tax Cuts, it is not inaccurate, but really a Big Giveaway to Rich People. So, maybe he’s onto something here, shouting in print. Tax Cuts For Rich People will lead to significant Medicare Cuts!!! I like exclamation marks, too. Try it for yourself. Mockery is the sincerest form of criticism.
