Start Her Up
Cathi Crabtree’s road trip toward history hasn’t even begun yet (she and her Democratic Convention delegates-mates set off for Philadelphia Saturday morning) but she’s already spinning in the whirlpool of emotions and excitement surrounding it.
She sat on the phone last night. On the other end of the line was…, well, let’s let Cathi herself tell it:
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Here’s a sampling of responses to her announcement of same on Facebook:
Did you stutter and laugh a lot like a teenager with a huge crush?
OMG…😳😍✨💖✨💖😍!!!
Really??
so wonderful! I still cherish the time I had speaking with Hillary in 2008!
Living vicariously through you!
So cool, Cathi; WHAT A THRILL! Goooooo Hillary! 👍👏
Soooooooooo cool – I’m excited for you!!
Tell her tomorrow is payday so I’m sending her some $$
Looks like Hillary’s gonna have a new president for her fan club by the end of next week.
Be here every day next week, Monday through Friday, as we follow Cathi and her pals delegatin’ for the Dems in Philly.
I’ll guarantee you this: It won’t be the hate, fear & fascist fest the just-concluded GOP rally was this week.
Right now, it promises to be a scream-orgy for those who’ve longed to see a woman move into the Oval Office.
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The Duality Of Me
I was proud of myself this AM for coming up with what I thought at the time was a great nickname for Donald Trump.
Great, because it makes both an historical political reference and is offensively puerile. I was in the shower when this brainstorm struck.
Here it is: Il Douche-ay.
Like it? Mussolini and all? Insulting while spot-on accurate?
Il Duce
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At first I was infatuated with it. Then I had those second thoughts that define the civilized, thinking human being I fancy myself as.
Sure, douche is a commonly accepted pejorative these days. But why? Because women’s nethers are so gross? Because an amoral, narcissistic, demagogic know-nothing (and proud of it) is so disgusting that only the washing-out of such a yucky part of the female anatomy will do to describe him?
So, naturally, I’m scrapping the whole thing. Damn. But, as Bertrand Russell once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.”
Even wise guys.
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July 22nd Birthdays
William Archibald Spooner — Beloved, absent-minded, tongue-tied Oxford don after whom the descriptor “spoonerism” was coined. He was notorious for flip-flopping letters, words, and whole phrases, inadvertently, to comic effect. Some examples (from The Telegraph):
At a wedding: “It is kisstomary to cuss the bride.”
“A well-boiled icicle” for “well-oiled bicycle.”
To a lazy student: “You have tasted a whole worm.”
Paying a visit to a college official: “Is the bean dizzy?”
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Emma Lazarus — “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
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Edward Hopper — American artist of the ashcan school, he painted that famous image of the big city corner diner (“The Nighthawks”) that is for sale, in excruciatingly altered form (“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”), in every chintzy gift shop in America.
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George Clinton — Do fries go with that shake?
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Willem Dafoe — One of the odder castings of Jesus in the history of filmdom.
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On this date in 2013, Dennis Farina died. My favorite line of his, from the movie Midnight Run: “Sidney, siddown, relax, have a sandwich, drink a glass of milk, do some fuckin’ thing.”
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Enough with the comparisons. Donald Trump is nothing like those to whom he’s being linked. There was only one Hitler, one Mussolini, one Stalin. There is only one Trump. He is neither a Jedi master nor a Doctor Eeee-vil. He’s one of a kind. His historical potential as yet unknown.
Leave the projections out of it. Nothing in his current campaign demonstrates more than his total disinterest in the lessons of history.
Quite the contrary, his ego just feeds on the comparisons being made. He wants to be legendary. All of his bluster and puffery is deliberate, so to distract the media from its role as impartial observers.
Occasionally, with less and less frequency, an actual journalist stumbles into an actual newsroom with something more than third-hand reactions and non-sequitur; with more than polling data and a catchy lede. Sadly, such work is instantly fed into the trusty shredder of punditry that occupies every available seat.
The name Saul Alinsky is invoked. Nobody who’s actually read his work has a cushy chair at the table. Nobody dare point out that the path that led to Trump’s nomination (by the Party of God) was lifted straight from Alinsky’s texts. Laid out stone by stone, by a long line of finger pointers and liars, who express shock, without remorse, that it has led to Trump.
Re: Donald’s new nickname, my sweetie’s been using The Trumpster Fire. IDK if it’s original or someone else made it up, but we like it. It brings to mind a smelly mess that’s hard to put out once it starts.
As a woman, I sencond dropping Il douche, but I bow to how your brain works.