Not Too Sharpie

The title of this piece might very well have been "The President is Mentally Ill Part Two", but I chose to leave well enough alone. You get the idea any way. After another week of bizarre behavior from the commander-in chief, we find ourselves, not at a crossroads (we passed that point nearly three years ago), but at what should be the proverbial end of the line. This administration has over sixteen months until it is supposed to end, and I don't see how it will possibly endure for that length of time. I realize that it is unsettling to picture an extremist dunce like Mike Pence with his finger on the nuclear codes, but Donald Trump is another thing all together. The Donald is what happens when a political party spends over half-a-century panning to a demographic that had previously been ignored by politicians in this country: the clinically insane.
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You all know the story by now: Trump predicted offhandedly that Hurricane Dorian was going to hit Alabama. When it was pointed out to him that the storm would not move that far inland, he might have just admitted an honest error and let the matter pass. No one would have given it a second thought, all would have been forgotten, and we might have all moved on from there.
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As John Belushi might have said back in his day,  "BUT NOOOOOOOO!!!!"
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Remember, this is Donald Trump we're talkin' about here. He has spent the past few days trying to prove that his weather forecast was correct, and that the FAKE NEWS MEDIA has it all wrong and is only attempting to discredit him. He then arranged what has to be the stupidest photo-op that it has been my joy to witness since the days of Dubya. He dragged out a chart that was apparently created by a government weather bureau which charted the hurricane's path. He (or one of his yes-men) then used a Sharpie to extend the course of destruction into Alabama, just above the Florida panhandle. it was such an amateurish attempt at deception that one imagines that his loved-ones (and he does have a few I'm told) are weeping openly at this hour at the man's complete pathos.

This is not the way leaders of the free world are supposed to act. To describe the president's behavior as inappropriate since the day he took office nearly three year ago is an understatement at best. I'll say it again: We should not wait until January 20, 2021. He should be legally removed from office as soon as humanly possible.

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTING VIEWING:

The TOO FREAKIN' GOOD TO BE TRUE DEPARTMENT
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When I was a kid, my late mother's favorite recording artist was a choral group called the Ray Conniff Singers. They're remembered today for taking the pop/rock standards of the time and watering them down to make the music palatable to the ears of the parents of the baby boomers. One would never have expected Ray to make counter culture history - and he never did. But one night, one of the women in his choir most certainly did. Read on....

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Carole Ferace

January 28, 1972: At a bland event inside the bland Nixon White House, the bland president was honoring the founder of the very bland Readers Digest. The entertainment on this exceedingly bland evening was the fabulously bland Ray Conniff and his chorus of exquisitely bland singers. One of them, a young woman named Carole Ferace, had a message for the president on the nasty subject of the war in Vietnam, which (you'll be kind enough to recall) was raging out of control at that moment in history. She publicly shamed The Trickster for calling himself "a Christian" while allowing the American-funded carnage to continue. As you might imagine, this didn't go over too well with the seriously bland Nixon crowd. Also in the audience on this preposterously bland evening was the hysterically bland Bob Hope and the righteously bland Billy Graham. Apparently neither man was very amused by Ms. Ferace's anything-but-bland remarks. She was thrown out of the festivities.

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You've got to see this to believe it. Here's a link to watch the incident on YouTube:

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https://youtu.be/98nhA0JlXII

She showed extraordinary courage. Here's to you, Ms. Ferace!

SUGESSTED READING:

A Good Life
by Ben Bradlee

The legendary editor of the Washington Post was recently depicted by Tom Hanks in the film, The Post. I read his memoirs when they came out over twenty years ago. I'm in the process of reading them again. Bradlee was truly one of the most interesting characters in American journalistic history. A good life indeed.