Nepotism: A Relative Crime
Hollywood did not invent nepotism, but it certainly turned it into a thriving business. It was prevalent because the studio bosses could always find an opening in the producer ranks for a close relative. Unlike writers, directors, composers and cinematographers, those guys didn’t have to possess any discernible talent. In fact, a popular gag line in the 30s and 40s parodied Hemingway’s book title: “The Son-in-Law Also Rises.”
Hollywood did not invent nepotism, but it certainly turned it into a thriving business. It was prevalent because the studio bosses could always find an opening in the producer ranks for a close relative. Unlike writers, directors, composers and cinematographers, those guys didn’t have to possess any discernible talent. In fact, a popular gag line in the 30s and 40s parodied Hemingway’s book title: “The Son-in-Law Also Rises.”
The upside of nepotism was that the boss figured he could trust these family members/employees not to sell him out to gossip columnists and his rivals. The downside was that the dispenser of favors was often trading competence for loyalty.
As President Trump recently discovered, competence in one field doesn’t guarantee it in another. Just when most sensible people were more than ready to brush the Russian collusion scandal/witch hunt into the dust bin, the world discovered that Donald Trump, Jr., had run off last year to have a secret meeting with a Russian lawyer he believed had direct connections to Vladimir Putin.
Never mind that in the end, it was much ado about nothing. Because young Trump didn’t immediately announce it to the FBI and, instead, emailed “I love it” and rushed off like a frat boy on his way to a Friday night beer bust, it turned it into something that was much ado about something.
It didn’t help things that for months, Junior didn’t think to mention the meeting, and only recalled it when he got word that the NY Times was about to break the story.
It was a given that the Democrats would devote weeks and months, in collusion with the media, to make mountains out of molehills. But it took Donald, Junior, to provide them with the mountain upon which to plant their flag.
Now, I’d be the first person to admit that Donald Trump, Jr., has a much busier social schedule than I do. But if every day of my father’s presidency, the media was beating the drum over collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, I’m pretty sure that no matter what a social gadfly I might be, a little buzzer would go off in my head, reminding me that, oh yeah, I had, in fact, met secretly with a woman who, if not what is referred to in the espionage world as a “honey pot,” was certainly a Russian.
My basic question, though, is how much more dirt did Donald, Jr., think the campaign needed to have on Hillary Clinton. I mean, we’ve known this harridan for a quarter of a century. Let’s just say that Donald, Jr., had come away from the meeting with snapshots of Mrs. Clinton wearing a Nazi uniform, riding a naked Huma Abedin around the kitchen up in Chappaqua. The Democrats would have claimed the pictures had been photo-shopped, and most Republicans would have shrugged and said, “We knew it all along.”
Aside from being naïve and clearly out of his depth when it comes to hardball politics, I think the only thing that Junior was guilty of was trying too hard to prove himself invaluable to his old man.
That reminds me of something that’s been bugging me for several months. It’s bad enough that the Republicans in Congress can’t agree about anything. But they could at least be united in calling for investigations into (1) Lois Lerner using her powers at the IRS to illegally target conservatives; (2) Susan Rice using her power in the Obama administration to leak secret documents to the media; and (3) Hillary Clinton’s role in the Benghazi massacre and subsequent coverup, her private server and her accepting bribes from foreign nationals while serving as Secretary of State.
Apparently, there are Americans colluding with Vladimir Putin. But they’re not Republicans and none of them are named Trump. The folks receiving Russian rubles are environmentalists. It seems that Putin has aligned himself with greenies to oppose fracking. They might appear to make strange bedfellows, but they have a common cause, even if their motives couldn’t be much different. The greenies want to turn America from an industrial nation to one that relies entirely on wind, sun and fairy dust. For Putin’s part, he wants to make sure that the U.S. is no position to free Europe of its dependence on Russian oil by supplying it with low-cost natural gas.
The environmentalists talk a good game about caring about the planet, but they’re quite content to link up with Putin, even though his sole motivation is to have all of Europe burning Russian fossil fuel.
If I had the power, I would take away the power of Congress to create entitlements. No matter how well-intentioned they may appear, and the actual intention behind all of the giveaways is to guarantee their re-election, they never work out the way that’s good for the country. For instance, in the midst of the Great Depression, they created Social Security. It was to be a safety net for Americans, but it was based on retirement at the age of 65. That was workable when the average age at which Americans died was 64. It is now up in the 80s, and that safety net is now a noose around the neck of the national economy.
Or consider Medicaid, if you will. In 1970, it was intended to provide medical care for the elderly and the disabled. In 1970, it represented 1.4% of the nation’s economy. Today, it eats up just under 10%!
Like most horror stories, it got worse under Obama, who decided to include able-bodied adults who don’t have children. As that pretty much guaranteed that irresponsible blacks and young illegal aliens would be covered, it can be rightly seen as bribes for votes paid for by the American taxpayer.
No matter how you feel about ObamaCare, you have to give the Democrats kudos for coming up with a health care plan doomed to failure that would be blamed on Republicans even though not a single one of them voted for it.
The impasse may all come down to semantics. It seems that even though the Democrats recognize that ObamaCare is imploding even as we sit here, they hate the idea of repealing ObamaCare because it would remove their idol’s name from his signature piece of legislation, as awful as it is. On the other hand, even Chuck Schumer has announced he would consider working on changing it.
Well, if you take an existing piece of legislation and you change it, you have in fact repealed and replaced the original bill.
I think the Republicans should get together with the Democrats and cobble out something that both sides can stomach. But in doing so, they should take a page out of the Madison Avenue playbook and call it the New & Improved ObamaCare bill.
Until now, I suspect that most of you have never heard of my congressman. But all of that has changed because Brad Sherman showed himself to be the clown I have always known him to be by introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump.
Now when I ridicule him, you’ll know who he is. And when I call him a pinhead, you’ll realize it’s because his head actually comes to a point.
Oregon, like the youngest son in a family, is constantly trying to keep up with its bigger, goofier, brothers, California and Washington.
The state legislators are poised to decriminalize cocaine and heroin because the laws, they insist, inordinately target people of color.
The next order of business will no doubt be to decriminalize the sexual abuse of children because the laws inordinately target pedophiles.
It’s no secret that I despise politicians who get to stick their names on books written by ghosts, and then get to go on TV and promote the books and their political careers. Well, perhaps, when I say “despise,” the word I’m actually searching for is “envy.”
Writing books, even my books, is not easy. Getting them published is nearly as hard. Having to watch hack politicians beating me at my own game without even having to lift a finger or a pencil is this layman’s idea of a sin. Heck, Chelsea Clinton isn’t even a politician, and she has three of them floating around.
If I were younger and looking for a career to pursue, I might still consider writing, but that’s because I don’t know how to do anything else. Which makes me think that I have the makings of a diversity officer. Apparently, every college worth its ivy has to have one of these guys to make certain that everyone on the school payroll says all the right things about the glories of diversity, so long as it involves race, gender and religion, and has nothing to do with a diversity of ideas.
The job might not sound so glamorous, but a recent study found that there are 50 diversity officers around the country who are earning, on average, $175,000.
That does sound like an awful lot of money for doing nothing. But let me remind you that is what we pay congressmen.
I know that a lot of you only make your way to the end of my ramblings in the hope there will be a joke waiting for you, like dessert after an otherwise boring meal.
But I received a few complaints about some of the jokes being slightly raunchy. And, after all, there are ladies here.
So, in the future, more clean jokes. Of course, you can keep sending the other ones, just to remind me of the jokes I won’t be sharing.
As Disqus still won’t let me post responses to your comments, those who feel the urge are free to address me at [email protected].
If I’m a little tardy getting back to you, it’s because I’m scheduled for eye surgery on Friday, July 21.
