Bachelor star Corinne has it all – crocodile smile, youthful approach, open heart, to say nothing of her naked determination to get the job done. And so it came as no surprise when she was pegged for a post in the Trump Administration.
“I want to get one,” Corinne quipped. “But just a little one.”
Prodded further, she conceded that her nanny would be vital in all future endeavors. “She knows how to cut my cucumbers just right.”
The Department of Agriculture has the inside track.*
(*Is there supposed to be a caveat at the end of a fake news story? I’m new at this.)
The film opens with an extreme close-up of a black man, Nogo, driving at night on a deserted road. The camera pulls back to reveal Nogo being followed by a full-size pickup truck, its high beams bearing down. Nogo is forced off the road. The driver and passengers, each bearing arms, lean out of the truck as Nogo leaps out, tire iron in hand.“Tolerance! You got that?” He smashes out a headlight and then the other as the driver raises a shotgun. Nogo stares back, defiant. “You better have more than that.”
Black out, gun shots. Opening credits roll.
Yes, just think Django Unchained meets Punch Drunk Love meets Easy Rider.
Hey, happy holidays if I don’t see you! I hope your fast goes well. Happy New Year’s, Valentine’s and Easter too. I hope that this new president doesn’t depress you or global warming and these terrorists, yeah, I hope they cut it out, and people, you know, get a fair wage for their work. Happy birthday too, and I hope your mom’s funeral isn’t too bad and that cancer of yours gets better. I mean, if I don’t see you.*
Ranting isn’t enough. Neither is reason nor wit. We need more. We need vision. We need fury. We need the Anti-Trump. While the comedians do try – Bee, Colbert, Oliver, Noah – they always fail in looking for a laugh, such as Trevor Noah’s recent quip to alt-right spinster Tomi Lahren’s stating, “I don’t see color”: What do you do at a traffic light?
Elizabeth Warren is on the right track: Trump is not draining the swamp, nope. He’s inviting the biggest, ugliest swamp monsters in the front door, and he’s turning them loose on our government and our economy.But her rhetoric is too measured, too precise. The Anti-Trump must stare into the hateful void to find the words to break the spell.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie seems to have the right stuff: The election of Donald Trump has flattened the poetry in America’s founding philosophy: the country born from an idea of freedom is to be governed by an unstable, stubbornly uninformed, authoritarian demagogue. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Now is not the time to tiptoe around historical references. Recalling Nazism is not extreme; it is the astute response of those who know that history gives both context and warning. (The New Yorker Magazine, Nov.30/16)
The Model United Nations is all the rage these days in high schools across the United States. School clubs compete at conferences, most held at universities, in committee sessions modeled after the United Nations. Each school team is assigned a specific country and topic and then debate other schools (acting as other countries) to come up with resolutions on world matters. For example, a school might be assigned India and the World Health Organization and be given the topic of International Aid for Syrian Refugees. It looks good on paper – many students use it as a tool for college applications – but it’s not as solid in practice. The problem is that students come from a place of privilege and thus have little genuine understanding of the issues, and more importantly, lack empathy. Instead of solving problems, the delegates strive for personal gain, aiming for the title of Best Delegate, and in the end model not the aims of the United Nations, but its practice at its worst.
They talk. And talk. And talk. And they don’t say anything. They just talk. And talk some more. That’s it. They don’t say anything real. They are wrong. They are right. They are in between. They just go one talking. And talking.Can’t they be removed? Or at least replaced? Maybe Trump could fire them.
No, I’m not okay. I’m not. I keep thinking that I am, or that I will be, but I’m not. I’m not.
I’m sitting here, typing these words, thinking that this might help, but it doesn’t. I can’t pretend that this is an alternate universe or that I can find a rewind button. This is where we are. This is it. This man was elected. 60,000 million people did that. There is no sense to it, no way to frame it, no story to be told, no moral, no aspiration. Justifications and rationalizations are worth shit. It’s only a question of what happens next, who will be targeted, sacrificed, and then the next group after that, until this zeitgeist – or whatever the hell you call the communal will to send us all straight to hell is called – ends. Until then, I’m not okay. Not in the least.
The talking heads stare back, beleaguered, telling us of the ugliness, how unpresidential it has become. They count down the days in feigned exhaustion. Only 29 days until another president will be elected, and more importantly, when the spin cycle can begin anew and the next batch of ne’er-do-wells can be stoned.The talking heads say everything they can think of and they say it again and again – emails, rapists, locker room talk – except about how their ratings are only as good as the race is bad, that the crummier they make it, the more Viagra they sell. And so that’s what we do. We consume this reality TV, hoping that next season, in just four short years, the chosen one might appear and take care of us forever.
This moment matters. This moment right now. I am writing. You are reading. This is it. Maybe more than that. Moments of truth. Never forget. And yet we do just that. A constant. People are killed. Wars are wages. On to the next thing. So right. And then it’s the next thing – what is it now?None of us will remember what it was were not supposed to forget.
I watch The Bachelorfor all of the right reasons. I am painfully amused by people making fools of themselves, confessing to devastating breakups, the loss of an alcoholic parent, awkwardly displaying their sensitivity just to make it as a low-level celebrity. And yet as pathetic as the participants may appear, one can’t help but feel sorry for them, their lack of understanding for the contracts they’ve signed, the blood in their deal with the devil. The Bachelor brand preaches a skewed morality – a GQ/ADHD cocktail of defending superficiality- to which all participants adhere, while they are coaxed to reveal their personal wreckage, be it a former love’s betrayal, a famous brother or deep, bitter anger. Host Chris Harrison has been employed to feign concern – “I know it isn’t easy for you to be out here with your heart on the line…but how did you survive that crushing day?” – to create the victims and monsters.And propagate the reality of this reality that love is sex, empathy is dishonesty and dreams only last until the next commercial.
And so it came as no surprise when she was pegged for a post in the Trump Administration.
