On Being Presidential
I find myself wondering why the bozos who condemn Donald Trump for being, in their ill-chosen words, unpresidential because he tweets, never utter a discouraging word about Barack Obama’s tossing a time-honored tradition out the window by constantly criticizing the current president, even going so far as to lead a resistance movement.
I find myself wondering why the bozos who condemn Donald Trump for being, in their ill-chosen words, unpresidential because he tweets, never utter a discouraging word about Barack Obama’s tossing a time-honored tradition out the window by constantly criticizing the current president, even going so far as to lead a resistance movement.
Harry Truman, who personally despised Eisenhower, never took pot shots at Ike once he and Mrs. Truman retired to Missouri. More to the point, George W. Bush, for all his failings, never attacked President Obama, even though Obama spent most of his eight years blaming Bush for just about everything, except getting Adam and Eve evicted from the Garden of Eden.
Speaking of Obama, on a recent visit to England, he sat down for a TV interview with Prince Harry. It was one of those times when two grown men seemed to vie for the honor of being the bigger dope. The prince, who should have been back at Buckingham Palace working on the guest list for his upcoming marriage, challenged the former president with such hardball questions as whether he preferred The Rock or Chris Rock. Never one to dodge the tough questions, Obama came right out and admitted he liked them both the same.
Some other notable black — perhaps Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, who recently pulled rank and commandeered a seat on a jetliner from another woman — whined that hurricanes are always given white names.
I think even most Democrats would admit it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest it’s an example of white privilege to have natural disasters named after them. Besides, imagine the outcry if hurricanes were given recognizably black names, and TV weathermen began reporting that hurricanes Moesha, Trayvon and Keshawn, were destroying neighborhoods and demolishing entire towns.
It didn’t make a big splash in the news, but William Graham, the 69-year-old son of Katherine Graham, the woman who gained control of The Washington Post when her husband, Phil, killed himself in 1963, recently committed suicide. “Like father, like son” isn’t always the good thing it’s cracked up to be.
The odd thing about his suicide is that it occurred within a week or so of the release of “The Post,” a movie directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Frankly, I thought Mr. Graham’s response was a tad drastic. The movie was bad, but it wasn’t that bad.
Speaking of movies, back in the day when admission was closer to 75 cents than to $20, people could figure on devoting about three hours to an outing that would include a double feature, a cartoon, a newsreel and coming attractions. What’s more, the three hours would include the drive time to and from the local Bijou.
But once TV came along, movies felt they had to become events in order to compete with the free stuff at home. To qualify as an event, the movies expanded to fill the same amount of time with a single movie, and they began to signify their importance by boasting a cast of thousands. They figured they’d make up for the lack of interesting characters you cared about by burying you in extras — peasants, slaves, Roman soldiers — you’d never even meet.
The movies didn’t get better, they merely got bigger.
If they ever get around to making a sit-com out of the life and times of George Soros, they could call it “I Love Luci-fer.”
Which reminds me, we all know that Hitler, who was apparently Soros’s role model, aspired to be an architect. The tragedy is that, like many other people, he had the ambition, but not the talent.
But I recently saw a photo of Lance Corporal Hitler taken during World War I, and it made me wonder if he also aspired to be an actor. Why else would he have stopped wearing a standard mustache in his late 20s and adopt the mustache worn by Charlie Chaplin in his role as The Tramp?
Chaplin was at the time the most famous man in the world, but Hitler would soon strip him of the title. At the least, it’s bizarre that two of the most recognizable men of the 20th century both wore the same funny mustache.
I was recently a guest speaker at a local community college. One of the students wanted to know the secret of becoming a TV comedy writer.
I suggested that having a sense of humor was a good start, but it definitely wasn’t enough. Some people are just naturally funny, but they couldn’t succeed as comedy writers because they lack the ability to transfer it to paper. Or they can be funny when speaking as themselves, but they lack the ability to create funny characters or to be funny through the medium of characters created by others, such as Ralph Kramden, Archie Bunker, Hawkeye Pierce or Frazier Crane.
Fortunately, for those who are just naturally wacky but lack the talent or discipline to carve out a career in comedy, there’s always politics.
This being the time of year when people are most given to taking account of their lives, I find I am most grateful for my wife Yvonne, our dog Angel and a few longtime friends named Hank, Steve, Harry, Art, Ross, Bernie, Tony and Frank. Come to think of it, it occurs to me that the only way that some people could be better, even more loyal, friends than they are is if they came equipped with four legs and a tail.
For a while, there was a joke going around that asked what the drowning of 50 lawyers indicated. The joke’s answer was: A good start.
That’s how I felt when I heard that France had begun deporting one in five of its Muslim population.
