Donald Trump
And
Chauncey Gardiner
The Monolith Re-Revealed
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“I find television very educational.
Every time someone turns it on I go into another room and read a good book.”
–Groucho Marx
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As Mark Twain so succinctly said: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes”. Not to mention that Twain’s literary confrere, Oscar Wilde opined: “Life imitates art more than art imitates life”’. Of course, the always artful, Woody Allen rightly concluded: “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television”.
So, what have we? When the most powerful person in the world, a man whose responsibility, arguably, is to make history: imitates television. We have…
Donald Trump
Though his last movie didn’t generate the vast critical acclaim. As did his serial slapstick and intensely hilarious farce playing the imitable character: Clouseau. Peter Sellers captured the essence of the ultimate, detached, faux-intellectual, dilettante, effete when, ‘Chance’ the gardener, assumed or was forced into, the character of the inscrutable: Chauncey Gardner.
That is. Until the arrival on the world political scene of one: Donald John Trump.
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T.V
‘Worth Watching’
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It is said that the President of the United States, Donald Trump is a television adherent. Not only does he watch the “boob-tube” regularly. He actually derives much of his intellectual sourcing from the ubiquitous electronic device. Moreover, it is rumored that his most intense information-gathering energy, is directed toward the news channel: Fox.
No News Is ‘Fake News’…
The ‘Channel-surfer-in-chief’ is not discreet about his television habits. The POTUS admits to being less than bookish. Those knowledgeable of his intellectual inclinations vow that the brevity of his attention span defies belief. Those with such knowledge can attest that the man’s focus can only be described when using the technical terms reserved for defining a performance on the lower register of the scales of Adult Attention Deficit Disorder measurement.
…Is Fox News
It was with bated breath that the world eventually beheld the oracle. That was Chauncey Gardiner.
They were heads of state and presidents and world leaders and news reporters. Who conveniently misconstrued the obscure observations of the widely misunderstood pontificator. The fictitious Chauncey Gardiner was “without portfolio”. Yet, the misunderstood fumbler was given the benefit of every doubt known to man.
Trump is blessed with the most ample portfolio. Yet, the real-life leader of the free world is known to misspeak and walk-back even the gravest proclamation such that his most truthful word, when eventually expressed, is viewed with justifiable skepticism.
Fox and the News
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‘Peter and the Wolf’
So, we might be encouraged to compare Chauncey Gardiner, with virtually no semblance of authority or valid claim to the throne, whose, every word is hung upon by a desperate world. With an American President, whose would be legitimately clothed with the gravitas of the world’s highest office.
Whose reservoir of available information is virtually inexhaustible. Yet whose self-imposed limitation of access thereto, is painful. Who is widely doubted in his statements. Which are so often little but, thinly disguised spouts of misinformation and outright falsehood.
With his brief, but explosive public history now in the history books, were Trump to tell the truth: to ‘cry wolf’. His expression, now, would be given considerably less credence than the least mindful uttering of a hapless Chauncey Gardiner.
Like ‘Chance’ the gardener, Trump the real estate entrepreneur, was, in a way, forced into a role. As a character that is a president and leader of the free world, he, like his fictitious counterpart, somehow stumbled onto the scene.
Maybe Trump was misunderstood in his pre-presidency proposals. Maybe, Trump will eventually enjoy the respect of a wider media. Rather than just being the darling of a: ‘Fox and Friends’.
Maybe Trump, unlike Chauncey Gardiner, who was no more than what the media and others made of him. Will become more than a, misspeaking, misunderstood darling of a certain select few.
Maybe Donald John Trump will mature. Into someone whose real value to the world, in the end, will amount to more than that of a character who was destined to be little but a passing, intellectual gossamer.
Posted 6 minutes ago by DILULIUS, King of Troy