Author Archives: Stacey

TRUMP TRANSITION STAFF MEMO

At first glance you might be skeptical about a black Jamaican-born dwarf who infamously got his eye shot out in a domestic dispute, as cabinet-level material.

At first glance you might be skeptical about a black Jamaican-born dwarf who infamously got his eye shot out in a domestic dispute, as cabinet-level material.

Department of Satire
Pre-Vetting Memo
From: Transition Staff
To: VP-Elect Pence

It was recently brought to our attention that the field of candidates to fill key new positions in the Administration is, well, a little white. Okay, a lot white. And, after Ben withdrew his name from consideration on Tuesday, like, Klan-rally-in-a-blizzard-white. We’re not quite sure what to do about this, as we feel like we’re getting conflicting signals. Steve keeps saying “think back to the future,” that we really need to reassure the white voting bloc of the New Model Coalition that the 1950s are just around the corner—which is already hard enough to do without old-school Jim Crow. (The libs are hip to the new kind, dammit, but with our man Jefferson Beauregard Sessions heading to Justice, looks like happy days of the new being old and the old being new are just around the corner.) And Chuck has kind of menaced that thinking outside the box might put us on the To-Be-Transitioned-From-The-Transition list.

But Reince and Kellyanne seem to think we need to make at least some nod to racial diversity, but on uniquely Trumpian terms: Even if insanity is not only not a disqualifier, but a recommender, in this nascent Administration, any nominees we make cannot be drawn from the usual suspects. Or, as Kellyanne put it, “I don’t want to see Herman Cain or Alan Keyes on the list. Find someone’s who’s a real political outsider.”

So we think we’ve got a good one, and for SecDef, at that:  Bushwick Bill of the Geto Boys.

Now we know, Mr. Vice President-elect, that as a white Christian conservative from Indiana, at first glance, you might be skeptical about a black Jamaican-born dwarf who infamously got his eye shot out in a domestic dispute, as Cabinet-level material. But he might be more your kind of guy than you think. And if you take away the “black Jamaican-born” part, Bushwick could fit right in with any of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy family, We know that comparison might not sit well with our white supremacist—check that, white nationalist—bloc, but we think we can use it to our advantage in an SNL “Black Jeopardy” kind of way.

As you know  (or maybe not—some say you’re “Quayle v2.0,” while Milo calls you “that clueless Hoosier fuck,” which is actually a term of endearment—if he didn’t like you he’d say “cuck”), the President-elect’s national security/foreign policy stance during the campaign was to righteously excoriate Bush 43 elites and Democratic elite enablers for undertaking an unnecessary war costly in blood and treasure on the one hand and, on the other hand, promise decisive unilateral action against truly deserving enemies that might make even circa ’64 Barry Goldwater blush. The President-elect has also repeatedly emphasized his desire, however hazily, to improve the lot of African-Americans, which appears to have gotten some traction well beyond our top black booster.

While we suspect that, if you heard it at all, you were probably reflexively opposed to anything labeled “gansta rap” in 1991, we think that the band’s Bushwick Bill-authored “Fuck A War” very presciently articulated many of the sentiments on war Mr. Trump has seen and tapped into during the campaign:

Motherfuck a war, that’s how I feel

Sendin’ a nigga to a dentist to get killed

‘Cause two suckas can’t agree on something

A thousand motherfuckers died for nothing

As we know, the President-elect will most definitely not be sending members of the working class to be cannon fodder (especially when his children can continue bilking and stiffing them, while he rounds up and deports at least a few million of the browner ones). But it’s Bushwick’s stance on use of nuclear weapons, though, that really excites us.

Admittedly, Bushwick would prefer to have his finger on the button. But given the decisive zeal of his position, we suspect that he’d be happy for a subordinate-but-synergistic policy relationship with Mr. Trump. Unlike Kissinger, who couldn’t rise to his president’s exhortation to “think big,” and more like Richard Perle, who was always keen to “move up the escalation ladder,” we have no doubt that Bushwick would champion an eschewal of diplomacy for swift, decisive, taxpayer-efficient military action when obviously necessary:

You’re lucky that I ain’t the president

‘Cause I’ll push the fuckin’ button and get it over wit

Fuck all that waitin’ and procrastinatin’

And all that goddamn negotiatin’

Flyin’ back and forth overseas

And havin’ lunch and brunch with the motherfuckin’ enemies

I’ll aim one missle at Iraq

And blow that little piece of shit off the map

Yeah, I wouldn’t give a fuck who it ices

‘Cause I’m tired of payin’ these high-ass gas prices

Clearly someone not only attuned to populist sensibilities, but also a potentially excellent collaborator for John Bolton, wherever John ends up in the New Order.

This is not to say that Bushwick’s confirmation would be without challenge, even in a rubber-stamp Senate. We acknowledge that Bushwick’s derisive metaphorical allusion to the United States for its perceived institutional and international racism

You can’t pay me to join an army camp

Or any other motherfuckin’ military branch

of this United goddamn States of this bitch America

Be a soldier, what for?

They puttin’ niggas on the front line

But when it comes to gettin’ ahead, they put us way behind

The enemy is right here g, them foreigners never did shit me

All of those wasted lives

And only one or two get recognized

But what good is a medal when you’re dead? Tell Uncle Sam I said

I ain’t goin’ to war for a shit-talkin’ president

Fuck fuck fuck a war

could present problems at a confirmation hearing, as could his near-deportation as a result of drug charges after a lapse in sobriety some years back. But on the other hand, the adjudication of Bushwick’s case shows the immigration system can, in fact, be fair and just; and Bushwick’s status as a born-again Christian (including calls for self-reliance and responsibility) since the late aughts, and astute assessment of a certain timeless quality in veterans’ issues, all but makes him an expert and broadly-appealing sympathetic figure:

You know how Uncle Sam treat its veterans

Absolutely no respect

Get a plate in your head, lose a leg, you might get a check

We also note, as a bonus for our brand of anti-Republican-Elitism, that Bushwick’s “Fuck A War” lyrics—which, though written during the first Gulf War, could easily apply to the second—show no love for the House of Bush, and indeed an unambiguous desire to punish gratuitous warmongering elites:

I ain’t gettin’ my leg shot off

While Bush’s old ass on t.v. playin’ golf

But when you come to my house with that draft shit

I’ma shoot your funky ass bitch

A nigga’ll die for a broil

But I ain’t fightin’ behind no goddamn oil

Against motherfuckas I don’t know

Yo Bush! I ain’t your damn ho

In sum, Bushwick seems to perfectly capture the national security sentiments that have propelled Mr. Trump to power: Weariness with war and contempt for elites on the one hand, but a desire for maximalist unilateral action on the other. And beyond policy matters, we think Bushwick and the President-elect would get on well on a personal level: While the scale of reversals of fortune between the two is vast, Bushwick’s 1995 “Times is Hard” kind of parallels Mr. Trump’s bankruptcy rise and falls, and perhaps reflects a “come to Jesus” dimension the President-elect has had with regard to women and chronic scoff-lawing upon his election:

Rollin’ through my hood like a superstar

Turnin’ corner after corner in my brand new cars

These hos used to call me baller

But that was before I lost my grip, now they barely even calla

Player ‘cuz they know that I’m broke

No Rolex, no Benz just spokes (shit)

Now that I’m back to life, and back to reality

Got one life which ain’t shit without a salary

No more playing mack daddy for you skeezers

I got one lover, I love her, so I’ma please her

And leave you tramps alone

Since I’m getting shit straight, I’m starting at home

I’m on a long road to nowhere if I don’t change

Life with no crime on my mind feels strange

Working like a motherfucker, slick like a Benz seat

Backing off my old hustle, trying to make these ends meet

It is possible, however, that Bushwick might consider Mr. Trump to be exactly the “shit talkin’ president” for whom one wouldn’t go to war; and that the Little Big Man with the jaundiced-but-astute one eye might see some other Administration nominees as being hostile to minorities. Perhaps the real question is, how much of the old “Fuck A War,” ‘hood vs. The Man Bushwick is there with the newer born-again, get-the-behind-me-gangsta Bushwick? Though someone is actually in the process of figuring this out, we recommend sending Milo to sound this out. Whether he comes back with a cap on his tooth or a cap busted in his ass, someone, somewhere, will be happy. §

The Secretary of Satire thinks the Geto Boys’ “Mind Playin’ Tricks on Me”  is one of the best songs ever, but in light of recent events, also recommends doses of Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” and Steve Earle’s “Mississippi, It’s Time.”

When the bad becomes good

 

The worst are filled with passionate intensity

culture-rockaway-bully2by John Willingham

Last weekend, my wife and I decided to go a hotel in Rockaway Beach, Oregon, an unpretentious beach town on the Central Oregon Coast, hoping that a trip to the ocean would reduce the considerable anxiety and anger that we both were feeling after the election. The place had a real bargain: for $70 a night, a two-room apartment about 90 feet from the ocean, with only the beach in between.

We hit the local cafes and bars for eating out. The Bar & Grill was toward the end of our list. The internet said the place had broasted chicken and my wife wanted that for dinner. We sat at the bar, as we often do, because it’s easier to have conversations with the locals.

On my left was an empty stool, and on the next stool over was a big man with a Dallas Cowboys hat and jacket. His wife was the bartender/manager. She had on an Ohio State sweatshirt. I love to gab with locals in a bar, so I started talking to the guy about the Cowboys. Well, I hate the Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, but I was careful to say that I loved the old Cowboys teams from the ‘60s and ‘70s but didn’t really care now how they did.

Someone down the bar said the guy was actually from Arizona, and his college team was Arizona State. He told me, yes, that was his team. He was vague about why he liked the Cowboys. His wife said it was the cheerleaders.

“One of the most admirable people in the country came out of Arizona State,” I said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Pat Tillman. He played harder than anyone in the NFL and then gave that up to go fight with the Rangers in Afghanistan after 9/11.”

“Yeah,” the guy said. “And he was killed—you know how? With friendly fire.”

I already knew that. Then I said, “I have great admiration for the military, but one thing that really hurts me is that so many fine young men and women have been killed for a bunch of crazy bastards in the Middle East who hate us no matter what we do.”

He put down his beer, puffed out his chest, and said, “I guess you’re one of those Clinton lovers.”

I tried to get the conversation back on the military, in a positive way. “Look, what I’m saying is that this country has sent a lot of kids to die with nothing to show for it, beginning with Vietnam. I hate that.”

“We could have won that war. We never put everything we had into it. What kind of fucking shit are you talking here?”

He was loud. My wife was next to me. It pisses me off for people to be that way in front of a woman. Old School, I know, but there it is.

“Look,” I said, pointing my finger at him, “let’s have an understanding. We can say whatever we want to say except let’s not use the F-bomb and call names.”

He thought for a moment, took a sip of his beer. His wife came over and shook her fist at him and told him to shut up. He agreed with me to keep things civil. We shook hands on it.

We talked briefly about something else, I can’t remember what. Then he said something about Obama causing all the problems in this country and now things would be great. I said that Obama had at least kept young Americans from getting killed for nothing. “Fuck you,” he growled. “Fuck you, you goddamn liberal pussy.”

I said, “Fuck you, and shut your fucking mouth.”

“Go ahead, take a swing,” he said.

I have a standing rule about this. In this day and time you do not take the first swing unless you are being robbed or someone has moved to attack you. Otherwise, you will be sued or thrown in jail. So I put my right fist, tightly clenched, on the bar, clearly visible to him but just behind my right shoulder so I could hit him with everything I had if he made a move.

“You go for it, you fat son of a bitch, and I’ll knock the living shit out of you,” I said. He was at least ten years younger, heavy but very strong, as his handshake had shown. Maybe an out-of-work lumberman, or maybe just an asshole with a big mouth. But he just sat there. He was a bully, pure and simple.

His wife was beside herself. “I told you!” she screamed at him, shaking her head and retreating to the kitchen.

I paid the tab. My wife was not happy with me for having begun a conversation with the guy in the first place, but she was, thank God, agreeably intoxicated. As we walked past the guy she tapped him on the shoulder. He turned his face and she gave him a peck on the cheek, laughed, and we walked out the door. He had no idea what to make of that, God bless her.

Here’s what I hope I learned from this:

No doubt there are white people who have been left behind in the “new” economy. No doubt it is easy for many of these people to believe that identity groups have gotten all the attention, and political elites have either taken the white working class for granted or screwed them directly or deceitfully for years.

But, too often, their legitimate gripes are subordinate to the hatred they have cultivated over the last two decades, and especially the last eight years. Everything must be good or evil, and everything that is not blindly pro-white, pro-military, and anti-Obama is evil. As Yeats wrote, “the worst are filled with passionate intensity” and no longer have any real bearings, only irrational fear, hatred, and resentment.

The “alt right” has scooped them up and brainwashed them into believing that the worst part of themselves is now the best part of themselves, justified, heedless, self-righteous and authoritarian.  It’s not just the economy, stupid. It’s humanity led once again to its darkest side.

My ill-advised visit to their dark place will be my last. I was close to being there myself. §

John Willingham is a writer and editor from Portland.

REMEMBERING MAJOR ADAMS: AWARDED THE MEDAL OF HONOR IN KOREAN WAR

culture-major-stanley-adams

MAJOR STANLEY T. ADAMS

by Dell Franklin

Heading toward the mess hall in my still-rumpled fatigues, I noticed this big lumbering bear of an officer, a major, limping toward me across the walkway bordering the parade field, a man around 40, who did not even slightly resemble an officer, but whose gaze was so penetrating and fierce I snapped my salute in quaking fear. He did not slow down but his eyes told me everything as he snapped off his own salute—I was the lowest form of life, the most worthless piece of shit in the entire United States Army.

I’d only been on post at Verona, Italy, as a private in August of 1964 about two weeks, and was still in the process of getting squared away.

A couple of troops in our medical detachment, the 45th Field Hospital, clued me in: Major Stanley Adams had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Korea as an NCO and received a field commission. Nobody really knew just exactly what he’d done to get the award, but evidently it was beyond unbelievable, included leading his out-numbered, trapped platoon in a charge against some 250 North Koreans. He was shot in the lower leg and kept on charging. He went down four times from grenade concussions and kept on charging. He engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat, killing one after another with his bayonet and rifle stock in an hour of furious fighting. And then he stayed on to hold fire while what was left of his platoon and the rest of the company retreated to its battalion.  His medical file was as thick as a small-town telephone book and dated back to WWII, where he’d also been in combat in North Africa and Italy.

The major worked in an office next to our commanding general, and, with the exception of Gen. Power, it seemed there was not a troop on post, enlisted man, NCO, or officer who did not tread carefully around his fearsome demeanor, including West Point colonels.

Then one day, about two months into my tour in Verona, I was manning the immunization room as a PFC when he came in for his annual smallpox shot. I quickly administered the shot as skillfully as possible and signed his card and, as he rolled down the sleeve of his shirt, he sized me up, and said, “You able to give me a rubdown, Franklin?”

Having no clue as to how to give a rubdown, I quickly said yes, and the major took off his shirt and walked over to the padded training table and lay on his belly. “Get with it, Franklin,” he snorted, “I got a goddamn crook in my neck and shoulder, won’t go away.”

I took out a liniment-smelling ointment called Logangesic balm and slathered it on his broad, meaty back. I began kneading the area between his shoulder blades. The major instructed me to go higher. I did as told, and then he roared, “Goddammit, don’t worry about hurting me, harder, goddammit, put some meat into it!”

I dug my fingers and thumbs deep into the area between his shoulder blades and pressed hard. I worked up to his trapezius muscles and down, my hands and forearms starting to burn. I did not dare cease. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I judo-chopped his spine, up and down, to the neck, then began digging into his shoulder blades when he sat up and said, “That’s enough.” I’d been at it a good 20 minutes.

He stood and pulled on his shirt, tied his tie, slipped into his green jacket, and nodded at me, as if I was no longer the lowest piece of shit in the entire US Army, but still nothing to brag about.

***

A week or so later he was in again. “Gimme a rubdown, Franklin,” he grunted, going straight to the training table. I quickly got out the balm and went to work. I really worked him over. Finally, as I kneaded his back, he decided I was worthy of conversation.

“Where you from, Franklin?”

“Los Angeles, sir.”

“You like the Army?”

I hesitated. “Uh…”

“I miss the NCO club. Miss my old pals…harder, Franklin, goddammit, don’t be afraid, dig in!”

He began showing up every two weeks or so, going straight to the training table. If I was busy, so what, everybody cleared out. What the major wanted, the major got; he’d earned it. Such was the Army way.

One night I was on graveyard CQ in the clinic, with the ambulance driver, PFC Alvin Callock, a black dude from Cleveland, and Major Adams came in with a cast on his arm, from knuckles to elbow. He had the cast on a week and wanted it off. He was pissed off at doctors who always wanted to put casts on him. I told him I had to consult a doctor before I could take it off. I went to the phone to get the doctor on call. The major shouted, “Hell with the goddamn doctors!” and ordered me to take the cast off. The glance Callock shot me said I’d better do as told. I got out the plug-in vibrating cast cutter and began sawing into the cast, making a racket. Major Adams growled at me to stop being timid and get the damn thing off, he was sick of it, hated it, “don’t worry about burning me or cutting me with that goddam thing, just get it off!”

When I’d cut through the entire cast, he reached down, tore it off, tossed it across the emergency room, stood, and walked out, still grumbling about casts and doctors. None of our doctors said a word to me about it when he showed up without his cast.

A couple weeks later he was back in the immunization room, needing a rubdown, and I hopped to it.

***

We had organized sports on post, and I participated in all of them, including tailback and defensive back in eight-man flag football, played without pads by pent up troops in a manner so bruising that generally we beat each other up. In one particular game, which was more like a vengeful war, our team of medics and MPs were battling an imposing headquarters team, and on a kickoff I was blindsided and knocked out for about 20 seconds, so teammates told me, and found myself crawling off the field, trying to stand up, my nose broken all over my face, bleeding profusely. Somebody hauled me to my feet and I kept right on going, staggered into the emergency room in the clinic, where our company commander, Captain Benincaso, placed me on a table, stanched the bleeding, and informed me he’d have to put about five stitches in my nose and set it.

At this point my mind, though still a buzzing fog, was starting to clear, even if my nose and head throbbed. I asked the captain if I could get back on the field, for the game was  close and I really wanted to beat headquarters.

“You’re not going anywhere, Franklin,” the doctor said. “You’ve got a bad concussion, and your nose is a mess.”

I began pleading, telling the doc I was feeling fine, that I’d be careful, that my teammates needed me…but he continued to shake his head and had already called on a medic to sponge and hand him instruments to work on me when a deafening roar, like thunder, rocked the emergency room where I lay: “LET THE KID PLAY! THIS IS THE FUCKING ARMY! NOT SUMMER CAMP FOR GODDAMN PUSSIES!”

It was Major Stanley Adams, hovering near, holding an unlit cigar.

“Sir, I can’t let him play,” Captain Benincaso insisted.

“Bullshit!” The look on his face was beyond determination to get his way. Benincaso lowered his head, sighed, stood back; took off his latex gloves. “Okay, Franklin, go ahead,” he said.

I jumped off the table and tore through the clinic and onto the nearby grass field. I sneaked immediately into the game and resumed my position as deep defensive back. Nobody on the headquarters team saw me and I asked one of my teammates who’d cheap-shot me. It was a muscular troop, a buck sergeant named Small, a lifer. On the first play they ran the ball, and I slithered into the blocking interference Small was leading for their running back, accelerated and clobbered him on the side of the face with a forearm shiver. He staggered. I blasted him again, then again, drove him to the side lines and had him staggering toward the ground when one of the referees, a black staff sergeant pulled me off, and exclaimed, “You got your revenge, Franklin, now get back and start playing right!”

I watched Small, woozy, stare at me, and beyond his shoulder, on the sidelines, alone, imperious, arms folded, cigar in puss, stood Major Stanley Adams. He issued me the slightest of nods, and I found myself swelling up like never before. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., and served in the U.S. Army as a medic in Italy.

OLD GUY FISHING

Watercolor by California artist Steve Santmyer

He pulls the
hand cart
out of the back of the truck
I don’t know the parts and
pieces that make a fishing rod
but the old guy is fitting piece into
piece into piece
the way I imagine a gun
would be assembled
and this, no less lethal
if one is a fish

Bottom-weighted with an
ice chest
bait box
lunch
lawn chair
nitroglycerine

one more day amongst the living
spent killing, maiming
it all feels good
against the ripple of blue
blue sky blue ocean
fog bank kept at bay by
thousands of spiraling seabirds
off the pier

it all feels good from above
below,

bottom weighted
the ocean waits
it will survive him
everything will
reefs and jetties don’t live
by rules hard and fast
survival is neither a given
nor necessary in any grander plan

we are the rule makers
we are the hard and the fast
the old guy fishing is a rule
maybe a broken one
either way
the ocean, bottom weighted
will win

—Monalisa Maione

TRUMP THE PRIME PUSSY MONGER

comment-pussy-grabber

by Dell Franklin

As a rule, America men, with their avid appetite for pussy, idolize a successful pussy monger, and certainly the Donald fills that role, especially since he is a celebrity, or in his own words a “star,” and let’s face it, the stars get all the prime pussy in America, and possibly everywhere else.

As boys, all we could talk about was pussy, and it was everywhere to entice and torment us. We accumulated playing cards of naked women, and Playboy Magazine centerfolds, and hid them in places mothers could not find so we could worship the kind of gorgeous pussy the Donald claims he can paw and grope with impunity because he’s a star, a born star bred by his parents to be a star and quickly shooting to star status by becoming a self-publicized real estate tycoon fucking over anybody in his way, another trait to be idolized by American males.

Well, it used to be that the real stars in our realm copped the prime pussy, like say, movie stars, rock stars, like Mick Jagger and Tom Jones, and famous cocks-men like Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty and Richard Burton and Clark Gable and Errol Flynn, these Adonises playing romantic roles and getting to make out with the likes of Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Marilyn Monroe….

The Dynamic Donald has an endorser in perhaps the greatest quarterback ever to play pro football, Tom Brady, who refused to go to the White House when the Patriots won the Super Bowl, a snub of our first black president, and perhaps an overture to his fellow conqueror of prime pussy, Donald Trump, to run for our nation’s highest office and lead the world.

Yeah, Brady married a world-famous supermodel, and they have beautiful children, and live in a modern castle, and he’s kind of an arrogant snotty asshole, but good lord, there is no evidence this deservedly heralded jock engages in the kind of so-called locker room boasting of the Donald, who claims that he can “paw up and grope prime pussy” anytime he wants because he’s a star.

Brady and most professional athletes, rock stars and movie idols, do not have to engage in this kind of talk or action because the pussy paws THEM up, waits for them like vultures in hotel lobbies and entertainment venues to throw themselves at these most beautiful of male hides. Meanwhile, the bloated, scowling Donald, with his mane of fluorescent straw and corpulent torso and sagging neck, foists his repulsive self upon prime pussy because he believes they, like everybody and everything else, owe him. He’s America’s foremost “taker,” rampaging through our prime pussy and institutions and laws like Attila the Hun.

To Donald and his ilk go the spoils of victory in America, where the rich and famous are transported in personal limos and jets, eat the most sumptuous gourmet food and sip uber-expensive bottles of wine, own castles here and there, and, most important, have an unwritten license to fuck the best pussy they can grab.

Looking back, as a kid, it was all about pussy—who and how much one could get—but there were always barriers as we grew up. As the gals became more accessible, you had to talk to them, charm and impress them, convince them you were witty and sexy and manly and important with your life and plans, and maybe you could get them drunk to further break down the barriers, but it was always up to them if they wanted to share their pussy with you, and maybe their hearts, and the game went on and on in our great organ-hounding grab-bags known as bars and pubs and nightclubs, but it was a wonderful, joyous though sometimes disappointing game, to be played among those desiring a kind of gratification with one another that goes beyond pussy mongering, beyond the groping and pawing by an entitled and feral criminal who essentially pays for his pussy like a rich vulture whose real satisfaction must be of conquest rather than the joy of having a delightful woman of substance and character sincerely wanting you for you. §

Dell Franklin once was blamed by a reader for the demise of the print version of The Rogue Voice because, she said, “He’s a pervert.” We know without a doubt she’s wrong, she has no proof, and is probably part of some vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit him.

HILLARY DEFANGS THE DONALD

comment-donald-v-hillary

by Dell Franklin

The Donald waltzed into the presidential debate against Hillary Clinton with all the hubris of a man so exalted in his own mind that he didn’t even think he needed to cram or rehearse to destroy Hillary Clinton before around 84 million American viewers on live TV. The Donald is not used to women disagreeing with him, and he is not used to women smarter than he is who can think on their feet and give it right back with icy cold precision, deep-freezing one of your vital organs—the brain—and demoralizing your emotional center—pride. Instead, the Donald is used to trophy models admiring his money and power and ego and golf swing and the kingly presence of a tyrant intimidating and humiliating and axing pathetic climbers on a bogus reality TV program. The Donald tells women what to do and where to go, a throwback to an era where women were subservient house captives to masters of the clan and took care of all the slavishly untidy responsibilities while the ruler brought home the bacon.

Since the beginning of time, men have been trained to dominate, while women have had to slyly and often subtly work their ways around the bullying of the more physically powerful male. My own father, an intelligent man and a successful professional athlete and businessman hellbent on controlling and dominating all factions of his family, never in 37 years came close to winning an argument with my mother, and it was a sad and alarming spectacle to witness mother, an intellectual reader and logical thinker, take apart arguments he spent an entire day mulling over and rehearsing and she’d reduce it to ashes within minutes and turning him into a mindless, fulminating, incoherent madman.

“She twists things around, she speaks with a barbed tongue,” he insisted. “If it’s night out, and she says it’s day, she’s right! But I know I’m right.”

My sister and I just looked at each other, unwilling to tell him the truth—he was wrong and brutally defeated—and shrugged.

Hillary sucker-punched the Donald during this first debate. She set him up like an experienced boxer with less of a knockout punch than her bigger, stronger opponent, nibbling away at his weaknesses, and tore him apart with a well-timed flurry of counter punches that left him reeling and bleeding, the poor ogre helpless without handlers to consult as he sat on his stool, winded and out of gas from the onslaught.

During this blood-letting, the Donald blustered and roared, and while she eviscerated him he sniffled and snorted, frowned, grimaced and made sour, persecuted faces when he wasn’t guzzling water, the sure sign of dehydration caused by emotional damage and embarrassment, while Hillary, face arched in a bemused expression of the calm conqueror, waited for his exhausted rantings and returned to her harpooning of the fat, bloated clown.

Afterwards, his aides and handlers massaged his brittle ego, placed ice bags on his bruises and bandages on his cuts, told him he won despite his shameful ignorance on foreign policy as well as other issues, went on news shows spinning his wretched performance, some claiming Hillary was too rehearsed while the Donald “winged it,” a natural man in every way.

This was a different ball game, Donald, a foreign turf, this debate venue, without the intimidated Republican male hides who had no clue as how to deal with your bullying, but a woman armed with almost seven decades of dealing with the likes of your kind.

Moral of the story? A woman knows a man much better than a man will ever know a woman—because she has to. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur. He maintains a blog at his website: dellfranklin.com

TRUMP’S NEW BLACK BAMBOOZLER

comment-don-kingtrumpby Dell Franklin

Donald King, the other Donald who would never allow himself to be called a white man’s namby-pamby name title like Donald, or even Don, and especially not The Donald, but by his legion of admirers as THE Don King, a fight promoter who ripped off his fighters and fought them off with a team of lawyers and eventually admitted to fraud and paid off Mike Tyson (another of his corrupted victims), 14-million of a 100-million-dollar lawsuit, the very same Don King who shot to death one man on the street but escaped prison, possibly because in those days in the Cleveland ghetto if a black bookmaker, drug dealer and arsonist murdered a fellow black man who supposedly tried to rob him it was excused as self defense, though this very same Don King later pistol-whipped and stomped to death a man who owed him $600 and was tried for second-degree murder, which was reduced to manslaughter, so that he spent almost four years in prison before the governor of Ohio somehow pardoned him, and so later THE Donald King transformed himself into America’s most powerful boxing promoter—as corrupt an industry as there was in the country—and completely changed the image of his mug shot of a hard-eyed young thug/gangster to a wild-haired bombastic super patriotic zealous spouter of American greatness while browbeating and terrifying anybody who tried to interfere, and ended up making millions on some of the greatest fighters and fights in the great era of boxing in the 1970s and ‘80s, and stiffed and chiseled and stole from just about every fighter and commission he participated in, and while doing so shouted over and over at the top of his lungs, “ONLY IN AMERICA, ONLY IN AMERICA,” yes, this man who absolutely shafted everybody he ever dealt with, fairly oozing incarnate evil from every pore, his eyes gleaming with the joyous cunning of a psychopath sucking in an entire heedless boxing crowd, this bamboozler emerging from the very gutter of our world and floating to the top, this Don King is now backing a man he admires as an even richer more nefarious bamboozler, Donald trump for President!

comment-don-king-mug1Yes, there he was, 85 years old, as outrageous as ever, the previously stiffened high hair not quite as stiff, seemingly forgotten now that professional boxing in America has become a joke and second rate sport dwarfed by the savagery of cage fighting, on the soap box, bragging about his 30-year friendship with his fellow bamboozler and thief, who like Mr. King has also sued and been sued and paid off when caught and continued his profligate lying and conniving and bamboozling to become the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

Ahhh,  THE Donald King will surely attract many black voters, possibly those with several rows of gold chains around their necks, or perhaps those carrying loaded shot guns and pistols, or those running ghetto scams, and possibly those tattooed, head-shaven, leather-clad white louts once snarling in the background at the real Donald’s rallies, though at this point they are no longer allowed in the background at the Donald’s rallies, and are replaced by an assembly of young wholesome silly smiling white teenagers or painted blondes or corrugated old white-haired lemmings told when to smile and when to cheer.

Yeah, THE Donald King is again shitting in high cotton, and instead of being in jail or surrounded by bodyguards, he’s back on a podium surrounded by cameras, on all the 24-hour supposed news stations, shouting into the heavens, outrageous, unintelligible, oozing evil, indulging in one more attempt to bamboozle the stupidest and most mindlessly macho countryman, once again wrapped in our beloved American flag.

God save us. Please. §

Dell Franklin has a low tolerance for hosers, especially in the worlds of sports and politics. He writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he also maintains his blog and website, dellfranklin.com.