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Rhymes With Cringe: Orange Is the New Black(shirt) [1]

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Date: 2024-06-26  

Talk about a dopey, self-anointing Walter Mitty moment. (Or, come to think of it, yet another case of Donald Trump’s arrested development- pun intended.)

On Saturday, during a Faith and Freedom Coalition confab in DC, the still jabbering J6 Jabberwocky had the gall to claim he’d look “beautiful” sans shirt.

Or not. By chance, Sunday’s “Doonesbury” kicks off with a rising-not-shining Trump- shirtless. (Warning: it ain’t pretty. Tube of ocher goop in hand, he puts himself together, not to say makes the proverbial physiological sausage.) Ugh.

Still at large, his boasts of vim, vigor, “self-made” pelf, business acumen, honesty, election integrity, and now a phenomenally flab-free midriff aptly fuel Pulitzer laureate Garry Trudeau’s satire. But this is serious stuff. (In 2016, when Trump became the presumptive Presidential nominee for the once-proud Party of Lincoln, Trudeau dolefully observed “one can only weep.”)

Oh, well. Let’s not worry our pretty little heads! In “Donald Trump Mocked After Joking About Removing His Shirt,” last Saturday’s and Sunday’s Newsweek insists (thrice, including the title), sans evidence, logic, or reason, that Trump’s noxious narcissism was/is all in good fun.

On the contrary. In good faith (and freedom), let’s recall, in a nutshell, some key backstory. (Call it The Axis of Evil Abs.)

A century ago, Steve Bannon idol Benito Mussolini coined the Trump mainstays “DRAIN THE SWAMP” and “MAKE [THIS NATION] GREAT AGAIN.” In 1933, he began posing, swimsuited, on the beach.

Two years on, he staged a topless newsreel feature on Himself. Not-so-beautifully bare-chested, he threshes wheat (as if it were an Olympic event). From this drear display, some widely distributed still photos were culled.

Let it be stressed: among all heads of government (interwar and before), such exhibitionism was unique. Figuratively speaking, of course, crowned heads and other bigwigs had failed to keep their shirts on. But Il Duce’s strutting half-clad for the cameras was a fraught, quintessentially Fascist first.

Spoiler alert: in the end, Il Duce fared poorly, indeed; accordingly, for decades no potentate felt eager to emulate his shirtless, macho posturing.

But memories fade. So, let’s not mince words. Some 62 years after the Italian Leader was shot, strung up, skull-smashed, and (for good measure) peed on, in 2007 (according to pundit/author/autocracy authority Ruth Ben-Ghiat), the Il Duce devotee/future Trump role model Vladimir Putin became just the second head of government to pose to the point of flaunting his bare chest.

To that end, he dragged Russian state photogs to south Siberia’s Klemchik River. There, occasionally topless, he fished. (Primarily, no doubt, for compliments.) Far from Olympic stature but still somewhat buffer than Il Duce, he paraded his pecs. (Not to mention: as if to presage solidarity with the Donald's admitted, on tape, history of habitual carnal licentiousness, Putin’s rod and reel jut riverward- creepily enough, starting near his loins.)

To parse that one, folks, you need not be Federico Fellini. Sigmund Freud. Or Stormy Daniels.

Newsweek notwithstanding, Trump’s recent basking in chimerical, chest-aggrandizing self-ardor is no joke. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s ugly as sin.

Sigh. On we go. Trouble is, if we keep denying the peril Trump presents (while believing that doing so somehow proves we’re brave), we can expect still more of the worst. Like it or not, report it or not, giving Trump the benefit of the doubt where none exists (for instance, by presuming his sick, sordid self-love is mere ‘donfoolery,’ if you will) cannot end well.

At this writing, all roads lead to tomorrow’s Peach State pitstop. Some suggest Jake Tapper, Dana Bash, their producers, and CNN’s suits-in-charge at last will renounce the pseudo-objective, both-sides-equal, fact-averse charade that’s normalized and entrenched the specter of T(rump) Rex (toxic masculinity, J6, fraud, corruption, carnal assault now confirmed in civil court, and all) which, on 1/6/21, nearly killed our vote-legitimized governance.

Four words: they damn well better.

Repeat: this is no joke. Nor is it a drill. Plain as the jowls that droop from Trump’s mug toward his likely far-from-photogenic spare tire, we verge (figuratively at least) on all hanging separately. With Trump on record claiming that fact-steeped reporters and President Biden alike deserve to be executed, be it resolved. If you don’t detect mortal danger, you’re willfully blind- and hence an imminent threat to yourself and your fellow citizens.

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