For your entertainment

 I'm writing this a day ahead to give myself a long weekend, so if I miss something epochal, well, too bad.  I wanted to share a video from YouTuber Steve Shives called "The Dunning-Kruger Presidency" because it's insightful and funny.  Bear in mind that Orson Welles was a notorious fabulist; I don't believe he was at a dinner party with Hitler while backpacking through Europe.  Welles turned 18 in 1933; he was in Ireland sketching and talking himself into a job with the Abbey Theater.  Hitler was in Germany, otherwise engaged.  Cavett is visibly excited:  "Maybe under hypnosis...?"  Bless you, Dick, he's just making a point about the banality of evil.  Maybe he read Hitler's Table Talk.

A little farther along, though, Shives presents part of an unfinished documentary by the great Errol Morris featuring Donald Trump.  Trump has claimed Citizen Kane as his favorite movie and Morris asks why.  You might think he was attracted to the story of a flawed, powerful, loveless plutocrat.  You'd be wrong.  Here's Trump in 2002, already combing his hair forward in unconscious imitation of the comedian Ish Kabibble:

"The word 'rosebud' for whatever reason has captivated moviegoers and movie watchers for so many years and to this day is perhaps the single word and perhaps if they came up with another word that meant the same thing it wouldn't have worked.  But 'rosebud' works."

MORRIS:  "If you could give Charles Foster Kane advice what would you say to him?"

TRUMP:  "Get yourself a different woman."

Twenty-three years ago it's all there.  The inability to complete a thought, the vapidity, the distinction between moviegoers and movie watchers, the fixation on one word (he certainly didn't know about the allegation that "rosebud" was Hearst's name for Marion Davies's hoohah), the attempt to sound thoughtful -- today he calls it "weaving."  That's what Trump took away from the film often cited as the greatest of all time:  the name of the sled.  Maybe he got bored and turned it off before the scene where Bernstein reluctantly OK's the headline FRAUD AT POLLS! instead of KANE ELECTED GOVERNOR.

"Get yourself a different woman"?  Sure, they're interchangeable.  If Emily was humiliated by your adultery, if Susan turned out to have a mind of her own, plenty of others out there.  They don't even have to consent.

Enjoy.  If you do, hit LIKE and SUBSCRIBE, as they say.  





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I hate the poorly educated...

Image
 ...when they insist on electing one another. There's a halfwit running for governor of  Missour i on a promise to burn books outside the governor's mansion if it's the only way to protect children from "vulgar pornographic material."  It's not clear what set him off, probably The Diary of Anne Frank again.  If his flamethrower is out of gas, he is also open to bulldozing or "launching books into outer space," which is certainly creative.  (The flamethrower may displace the AR-15 as America's National Weapon, depending on how high Biden drives the price of gasoline.)    Book burning is nothing new, Gott weiss,  but its mainstreaming marks a new phase in American barbarism.  We know what we mean by Orwellian and Kafkaesque -- perhaps we need a new word:  Bradburian, and not only for the destruction of books and what they represent.  In Fahrenheit 451  Ray Bradbury posited a future where firemen would start fires instead of putti...
Read more

Going out of business

Image
 With polls sounding a death knell and red-hats leaving his rallies like they left the oven on, Trump has dimly seen his future.  That's why Trumpworld is holding a sale on all Bibles, gold sneakers (pre- and post-assassination styles), Victory47 cologne ("My eyes!  My eyes!") and the limited-edition Trump diapers: Get a jump on your Christmas shopping and remember who made it possible to say "Merry Christmas" again with a fabulous  Trump Victory Tourbillon watch,  only $100,000.  Three colors, 122 diamonds, only 147 available.  Or a shoddier version for $499 if you're impoverished by Bidenomics.  Profits will not go to the campaign, the website says, and when has Trump ever lied? "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress -- but I repeat myself," said Mark Twain, who died in 1910, so maybe it's always been this way.   Tommy Tuberville,  football's worst mistake, thinks Kamala Harris should drop out of the...
Read more

Still alive

Image
 The story so far...on the night of September 26 Hurricane Helene ignored the projections and thundered past Georgia, knocking out electricity.  Power was restored late on the afternoon of September 29, but internet took considerably longer.  Today we gave up on Comcast and shelled out for one of those AT&T hotspot deals, and just like that...well, I feel like Sweeney Todd ("At last, my arm is complete again!").  Thanks to MarkS for your words of concern.   I've spent the last four hours trying to catch up.  I can't decide whether two weeks without internet, cable and even radio has been a vacation or a nightmare.  My impression is that everything is the same only more so, politically speaking, possibly a little more surreal.  Are people really refusing FEMA aid because the cult has convinced them it's a plot to a. channel money to cat-eating Haitians, b. a plot to disguise the Democrats' control of the weather, or c. a plot to distract e...
Read more