WWE THE PEOPLE

Years back your president was a character in the world of the WWE: world wrestling entertainment.  Just let that sink in for a moment.   

The Donald’s Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J. hosted both WrestleMania IV and WrestleMania V and in 2007 Trump got in on the action when Vince McMahon challenged Trump to a “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23 with the stipulation that the loser of the bout would have his head shaved bald.

A record number of viewers tuned in to watch Trump back Bobby Lashley to victory over McMahon’s Umaga and subsequently electric shave the trademark McMahon’s pompadour off in the center of the ring.

Trump was also a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show.

What you saw in both those populist universes and eventually on The Apprentice  was what you got: a self-promoting, woman bashing buffoon who lapped up the spotlight like a milk hungry house cat who sold himself to the jeering crowd on the fumes of his self-created and totally fictitious persona that was as real as Monopoly cartoon legend Rich Uncle Pennybags who wrote as much of “The Art of The Deal” as Trump did.

Trump, as we New Yorkers have long known, has never been anything but an overstuffed street rat with diamonds on the soles of his shoes who was personally trained by rodent expert Roy Cohen.

For those of you who do not know Mr. Cohn,  he was a greedy, power-obsessed, self-loathing, closeted homosexual whose modus operandi was to destroy the lives of anyone who did not serve him at his pleasure. Google: Joe McCarthy and you’ll get it.

Here are a few lessons that Roy imparted to your president who has proven himself to be quite the adept student.  (This my friends is what the entire curriculum at  Trump University has always been about).

"I bring out the worst in my enemies and that's how I get them to defeat themselves.""

My scare value is high. My arena is controversy. My tough front is my biggest asset."

"Go after a man's weakness, and never, ever, threaten unless you're going to follow through because if you don't, the next time you won't be taken seriously.""

"I don't want to know what the law is, I want to know who the judge is."

" I don't write polite letters. I don't like to plea-bargain. I like to fight."

I’m sure I just made Doris Kerns Goodwin throw up in her own mouth.   We who were public schooled in the fifties were raised on the legend and quotes of our most admired Presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt to Kennedy.   We were also raised on all kinds of American heroes from Davy Crockett to Superman to NASA Astronauts to regal sports gods like Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays.  Great Americans were just that.  They were selfless, courageous, devout and deeply empathic. Some were even decorated war heroes.

 I actually went to work for the WWE years ago (I barely lasted two weeks mainly because I walked around looking like Munch’s The Scream) and the audience that poured in to watch Smackdown and Raw were the kind of people who wind up in the ER on a Friday night for chewing on a lit firecracker on a dare.  I actually saw one kid, with an outsized head who, I swear to God, had an extra arm that was doll-like in size.

They call it the World Wrestling Entertainment because legally they cannot call it a sport.   Everyone who comes knows that it’s as all pretend, but that’s part of the fun. It’s a three-dimensional comic book, with cartoon heroes and villains who are playing out fantasies, not unlike your average towel caped five-year-old trying to achieve lift off from the sands of Jones Beach.

Trump is the ultimate WWE character who has long excelled in one thing and one thing alone: the ability to completely absorb and shoplift the talent and ability of other people by any means necessary in order to grab whatever he wants with all the delicacy of Japanese screen star Rodan who had an almost identical menacing face and jagged fanged beak. Rodan, like Trump, was portrayed via a combination of suitmation and wire-operated puppets and evidently played golf for 25% of the movie at the taxpayer’s expense.

Trump, having not been blessed with any natural ability other than hogging the stage like an anti-Groundling and being a fuck up/bottom feeder at Wharton which earned him a no doubt daddy bought degree, figured out early on that his only power was in being a trust fund brat who could score the best coke and by association that most gullible drug-addled women and that was enough for him to get a seat at the table at Studio 54, where he and Roy could canoodle and plan who to metaphorically urinate on in order to achieve great power.

The only good thing that you can say about AIDS is that it made Roy Cohn suffer and die.  But the grasshopper had learned well and was ready to keep the good name of Roy Cohn alive through his actions. Sadly, he went on to spawn offspring who have all turned out to be little Roys of sunshine.

 Every single thing about Trump’s entire life from his hair to his skin to his accomplishments have been as real as an underage college student ’s id,  which is why he calls anyone, especially the media, “fake’ because they are the only ones who can rat out the rat.

Whether it was calling Forbes Magazine or the editors at Page Six at the Post,  pretending to be his own publicist, from early on, Trump’s notion of what journalism was (and still is) is simple: it’s about creating pretend news that bolsters his made-up image.

We who live in New York have long watched and been casually amused by his outsized failures which include every single business that he has ever backed.   Perhaps it was Roy Cohn who taught him that huge debt was the way to game the system, through write-offs and bank loans and ultimately filthy Russian money, to win.

 Early on his career, Trump hung out, Zelig style, with the rich and powerful of New York, like George Steinbrenner and the Clintons (yup) until they finally had enough and evicted the landlord from their lives.  One thing about King Rat: he holds grudges.  Hence: Hillary.

In the aftermath of the Obama years, which I like to call 8 Years a Slave starring the GOP who treated him like they were all Southern Plantation Owners,  the only recourse for White Stupid America to anoint one of their own: A White Stupid Candidate.  But there is more to that.  

Obama was everything that they despised.  He was black. He was highly educated: a constitutional scholar.  He didn’t sound like them. To much of America, education is the anti-Christ because it dispels myths and makes you question how much bullshit you are willing to believe in.

 Couple that with the panic that homosexuals are disgracing marriage, uppity women are trying to be more powerful than men and even worse: in just a few short years white America will be a minority, and what you’ve got is The Civil War 2.0.

For now, White Stupid America is out of hiding, they can flaunt their Confederate flag jock straps with pride while Nazis get to goose-step,  and the Soviet Union gets to completely dismantle our democracy via cabinet appointees who were all given the direct orders  to obliterate their individual departments while the Soviets, the real master race behind all this, spreads inflammatory fake bots on social media and screws with our election process.

The reason that the GOP has allowed this to go on is that they have gotten to be the ultimate Roy Cohnheads.  What the GOP does over and over and over again, is destroy the economy for personal gain, until a Clinton or an Obama is brought in to clean up their vomit mess while the GOP can attack them from all sides to make it look like nothing is getting done.  Meanwhile, the planet literally suffers as known carcinogens are released back into our rivers and streams simply because it removes economic restraints on big corporations who do not give a fuck if you or your children die from cancer.

Just as bad, is the way that they pander to Jesus America by pretending to be men of God, while they blatantly shit on the Bible every single day.  They want the vote and that is why they stayed with Trump so Jesus can make his way to the Supreme Court.  Now when I say Jesus, I mean their version of Jesus, who evidently taught hate and championed discrimination.

It’s all a badly performed and totally transparent carney show and White Stupid America sees it as their opportunity to reverse time and go back to the days when gays were fags and dykes and women were submissive and grateful Stepford Wives who were apron tied to the house, high on Windex.

This why evangelicals like Mike Pence despise evolution.  Evolution means change and the threat of change is what is the key issue of our time.

If you live in New York, LA, Austin or any of the more liberal hubs of America, change is the foundation of your life.  All around you are new kinds of buildings sprouting and new movements headed by new voices whose commonality is diversity.

We know the difference, not only because we went to college, but because we had and will always have outsized dreams and inane sense of curiosity.  But more to the fact, we who live in the major cities have global citizens as neighbors.   New York used to be Little Europe which boasted the best of that universe.  But now you can add to the soup, the Middle East and South America as well.

We don’t need any walls because we have not bought into fearing or blaming minorities for what we don’t have.

 Plus we live at the Ground Zero of the arts, which speaks to everyone equally.  Alexander Hamilton was a rapping Puerto Rican for fuck’s sake.  To way too much of America, the touring companies are probably being perceived as one helluva fun Minstrel show.

Having started out in advertising and publicity, I like to create catchphrases, even for all the scripts that I write.  I just feel like just the right words can instantly make you get the subtext is all about.

 And I have come up with one for all of us.

 It's based on the one true weapon that we have: our votes.

 The phrase:  HINDSIGHT IS 2020.