Could America’s voters ever elected a President who was so friggin’ dumb? Or now that he’s just another ex-President, maybe he’s becoming dumber than dumb. But either way, I can’t believe that Trump is running a serious 2024 campaign when he said what he said the other day about the Super Bowl.
Trump ripped into the NFL for going with the pop star Rihanna during the half-time show. Claimed she had no talent and made a dig about someone who has only sold 250 million records at the last count. How many MAGA hats has Trump recently sold?
Those two have been going at it for the last five or six years, with Rihanna telling Vogue in 2018 that Trump was the most ‘mentally ill’ person alive. She also instructed her publishing company to tell Trump to stop playing her music at his various public events.
When Trump was President, he made a habit of throwing verbal slings and arrows at everyone who disagreed with anything he said. And we often found his insults and mis-spelled profanity funny because he was setting a new and different style for what the nation’s Chief Executive is supposed to say.
But sooner or later, such barroom language tends to wear thin, particularly when you’re just another guy who used to be someone important but now, no longer is.
Back in the day when I was living on Manhattan’s ‘trendy’ Upper West Side, I would occasionally get on my Harley Low Rider and go cruising around the city, usually ending up in a neighborhood known as Richmond Hill, which is a lower-class version of Forest Hills located in the borough of Queens.
To get a ‘pulse’ of the neighborhood and a sense of how the ‘other half’ lived, I would walk into one of the many working-class saloons in Richmond Hill, take a seat at the bar, order a half-buck of beer and listen to what the locals had to say.
The guys who sat around in these beer joints in Richmond Hill were working-class stiffs (their word, not mine) who had scraped together enough money to buy a small home which represented their total life savings in case anything ever went wrong.
What did these guys talk about? Three things. First, how come the Mets and/or the Jets were unable to even play five-hundred ball. Second, how come the fuckin’ Rangers were going to end up out of the hockey playoffs again. And third, whether the rumor that a bunch of you-know-who’s had bought a house in the neighborhood was really true.
The neighborhood known as Richmond Hill is a fifteen-minute walk from the neighborhood – Jamaica Estates - where Donald Trump was born and raised. And the conversations and arguments I overheard in Donahue’s Tavern on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill were exactly the same as what I would have heard if I walked the half-mile from Richmond Hill and bought a beer at a saloon in Jamaica Estates.
That was then – forty years ago – this is now. And now I suspect that both neighborhoods, Richmond Hill and Jamaica Estates contain populations that are as much non-white as white, and the Irish saloons have probably become internet cafes.
Which is why Trump now sounds so goddamn dumb. Because not only will the Super Bowl audience watch and enjoy Rihanna’s show, but they’ll be doing it at one of the millions of Super Bowl parties what will take place later today.
Yesterday, NBC Nightly News said that we will spend $15.6 billion dollars on take-home treats to be consumed during today’s game. That’s $48 friggin’ bucks for every man, woman and child alive in the United States. The TV newscaster went on to say that food costs had increased by some 16% over the previous year.
Think anyone cares? Yea, right.
I went down to my local Family Dollar this morning and a whole aisle which usually displays various crunchies had exactly two bags of chips.
I have to give the NFL credit because in 57 years the league has managed to make Super Bowl Sunday the biggest, single event-day after July 4th. And Trump had to say something nasty about what has become a sacred day?
To sum up: Trump’s no longer President. He’s just a dumb jerk sitting on a bar stool in Richmond Hill, Queens.