If Will Rogers Had Heard About Donald Trump

I entered this piece in the 2015 Will Rogers Writing Contest and  found out yesterday that I didn’t win.  The person who sent the email  tried to make me feel better by letting me know that I wasn't among the top three prizewinners, but I did place somewhere among the eight finalists.  He didn’t say how many entered the contest in total, so I hope I don’t find out somewhere down the road that I was one of only 11 writers who entered.  That would suck. (Here is the announcement and a link to the winning essays.)

Remember as you read this that the idea was to try to write like Will Rogers.  I love Will Rogers for his ability to skewer without going for the jugular.  Will might have been kinder about Trump, keeping it general without naming names, but Trump was on my mind when I wrote this, and picturing Rogers picturing Trump just seemed like the way to go.

BTW, See the typewriter Will Rogers is using in the picture below?  (I call it “the first laptop”.  Ha!)  I have one just like it.  Exactly.  Now I’m wondering if writing my essay in Will’s voice on Will’s typewriter might have. . .

Naw. . .never mind.

There's This Fellow Named Trump

There’s this fellow named Trump, you might have heard about him, he’s running for president of these United States. Got more money than he knows what to do with.  Has brains, too, if you believe the man. I sez if he’s so smart why’s he running for president of these United States? A smart guy would be finding himself a country where he could be the Grand Poohbah Potentate of everything.

See, in this country the president signs up to be everybody’s “public servant”. We’re his employers, and if he’s even half way okay we’ll give him four years, sometimes twice that, to show us what he’s been doing to earn his keep. One of the perks of being the president is we let him live in the White House. That’s big for some folks, but this Trump fellow is rich. Real rich.

Could be nobody told him he can’t own the White House. It’s ours. He can’t give his full time fancy decorating staff the go-ahead to ruffle things up. He can’t toss out the old goods, neither. He’s more or less a squatter. In a few years, no matter what, he’ll get kicked out, bag and baggage.

It ain’t as if he’ll be exactly homeless, but I’ve been watching this guy and I see he’s a fellow who’d rather be the kicker than the kickee. Our best bet, if he gets in there, is to make sure he don’t get too comfortable.

I’ve been wondering,too, how he’s going to take to the news that being president don’t mean he’s the boss. He’s been acting like he don’t know that. He hasn’t said a word about our good old constitution nor about congress nor about the black robes over at the Supreme Court, all of which gets to say yea or nay on just about everything.

I hear he wants to build a border fence at our southern end to keep out the criminals. He wants it to be a real fancy fence, cause he says he just might want to put his name on it.  (I notice he’s partial to putting his name on things.)

I hear tell he’s got a plan to get the president of Mexico to pay for this fancy fence that’ll keep folks from crossing into our country illegally. Lord love a duck! He don’t know the first thing about presidents. That guy down there’s got no more pull about those things than our guy up here does.

Now, I know a little something about fences. At the ranch I put ’em up to keep critters in, not to keep folks out, but one thing’s for sure. No matter how hard I try, I ain’t going to convince my neighbor to pay for no fence of mine.

I’ve been watching this guy and I see he’s a man of few words. Right there, that’s no ordinary politician!  But he repeats those few words, moving ’em around in different ways so you think he’s saying something special when that ain’t necessarily so. He’s partial to humble words like dummy, moron, loser, total loser, major loser, and—when he’s talking about his own self—great, very great, unbelievably great, and treemendous. Why, he knows how to get those crowds a’going!

Now, this fellow Trump puts on a good show. Rowdy, but entertaining as all get out. If he keeps it up I’d be obliged to tell him he should just go on performing like he’s doing and forget about that other stuff.

FRIDAY FOLLIES: On the Palin Docudramody, the Cantor uninvite, and Will Rogers' finest moments

 All alone, I'm so all alone...  When the Sarah Palin docudromedy "The Undefeated" debuted last week, Conor Friedersdorf happened to be visiting his parents in All Red All the Time Orange County.  He went to see the Sarah movie hoping to interview Sarah fans to find out what the hell they're thinking.  Except he didn't find any.  In fact, he didn't find anyone at all--hardly.  He wrote about it in the Atlantic and -- I don't know -- I just wanted to cry.  I mean, an entire movie about Sarah Palin and even the Orange County gushers can't bear to watch it?  That's just sad.

But wait.  That can't be right. It's La Belle Palin we're talking about here.  So, okay!  The Washington Times says the lamestream press got it allllll wrong.  As usual.  On purpose.  It may not have been boffo, but it did pretty good compared to that movie about Eliot Spitzer or that movie about Jack Abramoff.  But the last Harry Potter movie debuted on the same weekend.  Harry Potter!  So what would you expect?  Jeez.

And here's the other thing (sniffle):  If hundreds of thousands of people had only read Ben Howe's pre-review on Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood, Harry Potter would be eating dust!  The movie is brilliant!  Dammit!

Eric Cantor, in true democratic spirit (how'd he let that get by?), invited everyone (not just his nearest, dearest, most oblivious fans) to his Facebook page for a confab on whether he and his buddies should destroy the country swiftly or take the chance that the voters might not notice the country's going down the tubes and and let it dangle in the wind a while before tightening the noose.

Well, those damned liberals got wind of it and got a flash mob going, trying to disrupt the whole exciting exercise.  Honestly, there's only so much tolerance for that sort of thing when you're a Republican, so Eric's peeps got busy deleting all the leftist comments, ruing the day they ever got the silly idea of opening it up to anyone, just anyone, in the first place.

So if you look today you'll see it's still open, but they've figured out that allowing one or two Commie comments (out of thousands submitted, I'm guessing, if our guys are doing their jobs) will draw 10 or 20 delightfully defensive comments from their nearest and dearest.  Works like a charm!  Woo hoo!  (I would try out the commenting but I would have to "like" Eric Cantor and I'm not ready to go there yet.)

"Will Rogers and American Politics" was on our local PBS station last night. (Another fine program from the folks having to spend way too much time fighting the privateers in order to bring us public television.) Will started out as a soft-spoken, lasso-twirling Vaudeville comedian and became America's foremost political humorist.  (He was the Jon Stewart of the 1930s, come to think of it.) There was plenty to make fun of when it came to politicians and politics, but he was a gentle man, a compassionate man, and the Great Depression tore at him until he could no longer take what was happening in his beloved country.  He took to the airwaves and talked about it seriously.  Listening to the audio of his speech about unemployment, I'm hearing a man who is almost done in by the enormity of the suffering caused by that era's masters of greed and avarice.  (The radio broadcast was filmed and is shown on the PBS documentary.  It's almost unbearable to watch, Will's pain is so palpable.)

I didn't hear that same hopelessness when he spoke before a group of bankers (who must have decided to invite him after a late night of illegal hard stuff), calling them "loan sharks" and "interest hounds". 

You are without a doubt the most disgustingly rich audience I ever talked to, with the possible exception of the Bootleggers Local Union #1 along with the enforcement officers.

Now I understand you hold this convention every year to announce what the annual gyp will be.  I often wondered where the depositors hold their conventions.

I see where your convention was opened by prayer.  You send outside the ranks to find somebody that knows how to pray.  You should have had one creditor there to show you how to pray.

I see by your speeches that you're very optimistic of the business conditions of the coming year,  Boy, I don't blame you.  If I had your money I'd be optimistic, too.

You have a wonderful organization.  I understand you have 10,000 here and with what you have in various federal prisons brings your membership up to around 30,000.

Well, goodbye, paupers.  You're the finest bunch of shylocks that ever foreclosed upon a widder's home.

Will Rogers on an early laptop.  (I own that exact make and model.  It's almost as if Will himself is here with me.)

Moment of Sublime:  A freed humpback whale thanks the crew who saved her.  This is a feel-good story that may or may not be what it seems.  The crew of a fishing boat found the whale so entangled in fishing line it was probably hours away from sure death.  It took them about an hour to free the whale, and when they finally did, it swam a short distance and then put on an enthralling performance, convincing the crew that it was for their benefit.

Far be it for me to be cynical (and I can't believe this is me writing this) but it could be that that was as far as the whale could swim right then, and the glorious leaps could have meant it was gasping for air, trying to get its lungs and other internal parts working again.  But the visuals are stunning and I hate myself for thinking such doltish thoughts.

Cartoon of the week:

1922 cartoon.  Some things never change

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*(Cross-posted at Dagblog here)