-
Sir Donald

America's gossip media has its shorts in a bunch over the imminent wedding of Prince Harry--or is it William to Kate somebody or other. Pundits have mused over the interest shown in the U.S. trying to figure out the reason why our nation of commoners cares. The truth is that we former colonists continue to be obsessed with royalty. Witness the political ascendance of billionaire real estate mogul Donald Trump who may or may not be a serious candidate for the presidency. With his imperious bearing, his collection of office buildings and speedboat hair weave, The Donald has all the trappings of American royalty -- including a definite article in front of his name.

America's financial institutions create billionaires then put them on the tube; The Donald is a pretender, a semi-literate boor with enough money to manufacture a public personna and buy his way onto television where he can convince himself and the nation that his opinions matter and they are widely shared. The Donald is a pretender. Only time will tell if he is a pretender to the throne.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Watch the Birdie or The Tiger and the Tush After months of procedural wrangling, the U.S. Senate finally began debate on the proposal by the Democratic party to overhaul the nation's health care system. The momentous occasion received dedicated coverage on most news media outlets, coming in third behind two other stories critical to the country: golfer Tiger Woods crashing his automobile and the party crashers at the Obama's first state dinner. For anyone who faithfully follows news reporting in the United States, it is not surprising that any story that contains the word "crash" in it will normally rise to the top of the pile on the cable channels on any given news day. The recipe is well known: start with some violence or greed; add a blond in a red dress (what I would call "a bit of tush"); mix in a billionaire sports figure cheating on his wife, and voila, the priorities of the TV viewing brain start to happily shift away from reality to the much more lu
Read more

And the Winner is: DOA

-
The GOP is in the starting blocks, heralding the arrival of its Congressional majority by proclaiming President Obama's budget/legislative proposals as "dead on arrival." They say that the president's program is simply incapable of making it through the Republican dominated legislature. The implication of their message to the American people seems clear: why bother discussing any legislation at all? The argument is similar to the injury suffered by our democracy every time polls are taken and results presented to the country in advance of an election. Why bother debating competitive ideas when the decision is already made? The dream of representative democracy is lost, dead on arrival, as Jefferson and Madison turn over in their graves.
Read more
-
Human Need, Human Greed One must be careful of brain damage while watching cable news. I tuned in recently to watch the daily coverage of the health care drama. There was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi presenting a woman who told a harrowing story about how she got cancer and how she went bankrupt after her insurance company refused to cover treatment. After five minutes they broke for commercials from Tax Masters, Binder and Binder, three pharmaceutical companies, and that idiot who sings for Free Credit Report dot com. That American society as a whole seems at times to be rather ill is evident in the health care reform debate. One has to marvel at the degree to which Americans are willing to be smacked down by the inequities of the system in order to pop back up and ask for more. Polls indicate that much of middle America is beginning to turn away from its initial support of the Obama health care plan after buying into the argument from the Republican Party that the plan will resu
Read more