Of Donald Trump and Harold Hill
In the Broadway show, Music Man, a con man wins over a small town, at least enough for them to enthusiastically (and financially) equip all the boys and girls with uniforms and instruments, and everything. ("It'll be great! Best band ever in the entire history of bands. Yuge! Today, on the streets, I hear many kids are saying, just sayin', 'there's nothing to do.' Who knows how they manage, with all that loser. So after I'm both your town's band leader and the personal music instructor to all the boys and girls, things will turn around, you'll see, it'll be excellent, right here in River City. Nice to see you. No more questions.")
There are no spoiler alerts because this is a profile piece, allegory-free. How the play/movie comes out isn't necessary here, but rest assured those who do know can see Donald Trump starring as Harold Hill, easily, moving forward on a project to make the best movie ever since they began making movies, quite frankly.
Carly Fiorina could play Marion: "I should think some of you could forget your everlasting Iowa stubbornness long enough to remember what this town was like before Harold Hill came. Do you? Well, do you? And after he came. Suddenly there were things to do, and things to be proud of, and people to go out of your way for. Surely some of you can be grateful for what this man has brought to us. And I should think you'd want to admit it." The cast of Republican contenders who are up against Trump mostly leans toward some future absorption of his supporters which their own ascension could facilitate. Not as sublime as Trump's would have been; that ascension would have been a thing of beauty. So not many feathers are being ruffled.
Trump is that guy who could sell anything. The undercoating guy. The add insurance to your rental car agreement needlessly guy. No squeak siding and the rest. The telemarketer training guy hawking technique: learn to market like ... I'm guessing Harold Hill.
That thing Trump does with his two winged arms. Then he reaches out one of them to physically touch or shoot Trump at the other person, as if to dismiss, to silence, to inform of having been doled out sufficient Trump, wherever. He's been pulling that since an early Katy Tur interview, when he gave her that "shush, young Missy" kind of dismissiveness and a "what are you, some newcomer trying to earn some points? Your big break shot at Trump?" oh please, kind of tone.
All with the closest arm reaching out across space for some ritualistic reason probably only fully known to con men.
But he's gonna be yesterday's news, take it to the bank, because idiocy only goes so far. Graphs end abruptly for a reason, true, the future must play out, but there's an irresistible bit of arithmetic that even a counting seal could master. Trump is losing in the one poll which speaks volumes: Trump/not Trump. (Real Clear average Aug. 16th - 22/67.)
Criminy, Edward R. Murrow eating pork chop on a stick, these days the media filter is shameless, transparently obscene and ripe for some young Missy to earn some well-deserved points. To hear the consensus of outlets and "old pros" tell it, the emperor's clothes issue is clearly we'll have results from our Facebook/Twitter poll after football while the country is all what does that have to do with seventy-six trombones?
Let's return now to the early Romney campaign. "Obama said if we run on the economy, we're going to lose." Romney attributed that line to Obama subject and verb, with a face just made for punching (if only by way of EA Sports), and he sold it as though it were the truth. Because oratory doesn't imply a quote within a quote unless you make the context clear in your oratory, and there is a missing doozy of context here. Obama did say, but he was recalling John McCain's words in 2008, which then made Romney's the most 2nd grade launch to a campaign in memory. No, I didn't mean rate. And the media left it to the Obama camp to "he said/she said" it into the dustbin. Wouldn't want to come across as either unfair or imbalanced.
If you knew what voters were thinking you could get elected every time. When you work to create what people are thinking, you're halfway there.
I'm of the opinion that Donald Trump's purpose to the party is to win over the "both sides are terrible," we need someone who "tells it like it is" cohort.
You or I, savvy reader, will approach a Trump position paper as intending to make sense; we might take issue with the immoral and the unconstitutional parts (as we do) and curse the members of the press who have become structurally incapable of checking a fact in service of revealing the self-evident, while an avid Trump supporter will store the fact of the creation of a position paper as proof that he can navigate the West Wing while also representing folks just like her/him. Arm wing flap. Outstretched hand for emphasis.
One of the 'war rooms' in waiting is whiteboarding every feeling about an issue registered by this Trump cohort. Alone they cannot win, but co-opted they can provide Republicans a two branch majority and the opportunity to stack the Supreme Court sufficiently to return America to the heyday of male-dominated Puritanism and laissez-faire capitalism. They are the lowest common denominator, regardless of whether a Republican commentator/strategist would call that elitist.
But seriously, all journalism aside, arm wing flap, outstretched hand for emphasis, any reporter worth a damn knows it too.
