Where Donald Trump is King
I know it’s only May, and I know that Rev. Jones is still out there somewhere, planning on burning a picture of Mohammad or making confetti out of the Quran or some other offensive stunt designed to attract the attention of Fox News and sell some tee shirts. I know Allan Grayson can surface at any time, and that Michael Moore is joining forces with Keith Olbermann, which is a good bet to make both of them more obnoxious. And I know Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Michele Bachman and some other GOP candidates for president can be counted on to say or tweet outrageous things in the coming weeks and months. Yes, and Harry Reid is still running amuck, and there are plenty of athletes, singers and actors who will be embarrassing themselves, their profession and their species before the year is out.
Never mind all that. I’m ready to declare Donald Trump the Jerk of the Year.
I’ll admit my bias up front: I think Trump has been a contender for Jerk of the Year every year for at least two decades. Even I, however, never thought he was a big enough jerk to use the developing 2012 campaign for President of the United States—at a critical juncture in the nation’s history, with literally life-and death crises in the nation’s economy, housing market, and job markets, with the Middle East erupting and America involved in three armed conflicts, with a leadership vacuum at the highest levels of the government and with American trust and hope for the future at a record low—for personal ego gratification and to promote his cheesy, freak-show reality program “The Celebrity Apprentice.” But that’s what he did, soiling the news and political discourse along the way by giving aid and support to the assortment of paranoids, wackos and racists who had been denying that Obama was a natural born citizen.
If Trump had ultimately announced that he was running for President, at least we could say that his thuggish, uncivil, silly pre-announcement conduct was in good faith. Instead, he told the media today that he isn’t a candidate, which means that he never intended to be a candidate. He played the media, he played the pundits, he played the nation—all to promote Donald’s Trump, the Miss Universe Pageant, a competition including Meat Loaf and La Toya Jackson, and his tacky properties. When the nation needed new ideas, statesmanship, straight talk, courage and leadership, Trump came to the rescue with snake oil, dancing girls and invisible ink. The country be damned, as long as the Donald gets his People Magazine stories and Nielson ratings.
We all know people like this…shallow, self-centered, and absolutely irresponsible, who don’t care what harm they do or who they inconvenience, as long as their petty needs are served. The jerks in our lives do not have the resources and name recognition of Donald Trump, however, and even some of them would probably make their personal objectives secondary to the welfare of the United States. He is worse than all of them; indeed, he is worse than all of them combined.
I dream, a futile dream, I know, that there will grow a national consensus, in the fake of the fiasco of The Donald’s last 60 days, that he is the Jerk of the Year, and that this consensus will lead to national resolve to treat Trump the way all jerks need to be treated, to give him the treatment that is also the one thing he couldn’t endure. Ignore him.
Permanently.
Ethics Alarms 
I think my favorite quote of the day from Trump is this:
“I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half-heartedly.”
Translation: “If I didn’t have to take it seriously, I would have run this country into the ground.”
Can’t be done half-assed-ly, either, so count him out.
The competition for Jerk of the Year is fierce. Are you sure you just want to give it away like this? Have you considered giving it away in a…reality show?
It was so nice of Trump to, amongst other things, dupe the American public to churn profits for his entertainment industry.
Only Yiddish can appropriately convey my feelings towards Trump: Fransn zol esn zayn layb.
Hard not to agree about the JOTY designation, notwithstanding the apparent association between his query about the “birth certificate” and its subsequent appearance after Obama allegedly spent $2 m in legal costs to avoid producing it previously. As for that, I obviously must be racist, paranoid and wacko to believe that the several documents experts who have raised concerns about its legitimacy should actually be listened to, or at least be countered by others who actually do have some expertise, and not simply by those who write ethics blogs for a living.
1. Welcome back! I missed you!
2. I apologize—I was momentarily offended, and then realized that you couldn’t possibly have been referring to me as someone who writes ethics blogs for a living, since you would never presume that I am on food stamps.
3. You and I both work in professions where “experts” can be found and paid to testify, under oath, to virtually anything. A renowned expert testified that the Hitler diaries were real. Clifford Irving fooled experts. Experts, especially on things like signatures and documents, just paid support. I only five paid expert opinions when I genuinely believe I’m right. As a result, I am not in much demand, and have turned down more jobs than I have accepted.
4. Can’t make a living doing THAT either….
Well, true enough, Jack. There’s always the “hired gun” who will say anything. OTOH, they have to be able to explain in layman’s terms in a sufficiently plausible manner that there’s a potential to root out the liars. However, blowing off the “birther’s” concerns on the grounds that is is possible to hire an expert to say anything isn’t good enough. The implications are of such immense gravity that one needs certainty “beyond a shadow of a doubt”, not by a “preponderance of evidence”, or the weight of evidence that makes it “more likely than not” that the BC is legitimate. Blowing off the “9/11 Truthers” because you personally can’t conceive of the implications is an inadequate response for a functioning, mentating and thinking person. At some point in time, you will finally recognize that the evidence truly is overwhelming. [http://rt.com/usa/news/911-attack-reasons-towers/] Likewise here, you can’t avoid an investigation of this type, the legitimacy of the BC, just because of the implications if legitimacy is found to be lacking.
Re: the blogging. Glad you have something to keep you off the streets, although perhaps time with G&S would be more rewarding.
No, running a theater company, a small business and the complex work/pleasure/pain of keeping a family intact for 31 years despite assorted crises and disasters keeps me off the streets. The blog disciplines me to know what I’m talking about when I’m ON the streets.
As for X-Files you mention, I gravitate more to Big Foot, and Nessie, especially the latter, since my old love of dinosaurs burns bright,,,they’re more fun than phantom birth certificates and debates over metallurgy, and there’s at least a slim chance one of them might actually be out there, making them more likely to pan out than your pet theories. But to each his own.
Nice, Jack. I know that physics was not your favorite subject, and don’t take it from an old friend who WAS a physics major, but please do check out the link. I haven’t yet found anyone who can break the laws of physics. The towers came down in little more time than it would take an object thrown from the top of the building to reach the ground.
That’s fascinating, but actually irrelevant. Massive enterprises with huge risk violating all participants’ cultural and family values need clear and plausible motives in proportion to the risk and effort, and there wasn’t one. You could show scientific evidence leading to a conclusion that the Pope tried to sell Disney World to the Martians to support a secret gummi bears addiction, and the implausibility of the motive would still make the scientific evidence worthless.
I meant to say, with all sincerity, that you are one of the only conspiracy fans I know or have even heard of who has integrity. The fact that you are skeptical of the official conclusions on both the Twin Towers and Obama’s birth proves you are not unfair or unethical…just wrong. No shame in that.
Not really on topic, but I have this blog RSSed to my Yahoo home page, and just now, out of the side of my eye, I read “Joke of the Year,” which seems just as apropos to me.
I only wish he weren’t sullying the name Donald–my late husband held that name with the kind of honor that Trump can only dream of having, except that he doesn’t even dream of it, apparently.
Jack- Don’t blame him, it’s his hair’s fault. We’ve been over this. It contains a mind-control device planted by his creditors and Mexicans. (Being of Mexican descent, I get wind of these things.)
The only way to stop him from destroying the country is to send someone into his bedroom with a razor under cover of night.