Isn’t it just terrible? A Washington Post headline reports, “How nostalgia for white Christian America drove so many Americans to vote for Trump.” The horror. Didn’t any try to stop them? How could this happen? Didn’t anyone explain to them that back then, most everyone spoke English. Presumably, most of those unabashed voters still do. Yuck. And they all probably said Merry Christmas last month without getting nervous, and if they didn’t go to church, at least on Christmas Day, probably knew somebody who did. To be sure, not everyone gets to spend Christmas Sunday on a Hawaiian golf course. Life, as an earlier Democrat cautioned, is unfair. The unfair we will always have with us.
Which reminds us here at EC. President Obama has chosen his old shakedown haunts, Chi-Town, not to be confused with Chinatown, as the site of his farewell address to all humanity, past, present and to come. Wish we could be there — not. Frankly, it would be too dangerous. What’s the drive-by murder count in the Chicago that he so adroitly community-organized? It’ll be up to his successor to make a dent in those numbers, though the lame duck one won’t tell you that.
Nor will he probably have much to say about the huge White House bash he’s hosting tonight, an event straight out of Clinton Foundation casting. No one else will have much to say about it either, given that everyone will have to check their iPhones and First Amendment rights at the door or else. Of course, since all the guests will be of the caliber of someone who calls herself Beyoncé, there’s no worry she and they would have anything original to say. She lets lip-synching do her talking for her — what a setback to her career that she hasn’t offered to participate in Donald Trump’s installation. Four years ago, it was enough for the country to see her silently moving her lips at Mr. O’s second inauguration that all professors of rhetoric and speech could confidently declare eloquence dead for good. No denialists will ever shake up that scientific consensus.
There are other fish to fry, starting with all those who expressed a most unseasonal Schadenfreude over what happened to Mariah Carey on Times Square on New Year’s Eve when her tribute to Beyoncé did not come off as planned. There she was, moving her lips (and reportedly thighs) to the best of her ability, and the music over the loudspeakers refused to synch along. For some six minutes this continued. But was she upset? Absolutely not. Redefining cool and aplomb, she paced the stage like a cool lioness at the circus. Big nothing deal, in short. This was New Year’s Eve, Times Square, New York City, the place packed, the whole country watching, or at least all TVs turned on to ABC in the hope that Dick Clark might still escort us into the New Year — who in his inebriated or uninebriated mind would actually have been paying attention to whatever it was Ms. Mariah was singing or supposed to be singing or not singing or whatever else she was doing to earn her ample performance fee?
We heard she fired somebody afterward. So far, no tweets from the President-elect demanding that this American job be restored.
But just to be on the safe side, his predecessor is refusing to acknowledge that slight uptick in the unemployment rate. At this point in his illustrious career, he can’t risk any further setbacks.
Happy New Year, then, to our first EOW of 2017. Something tells us he’ll be a shoo-in for re-election in the coming weeks and months and years. EOW honors are all that stand between him and oblivion. In return, we’ll write his presidential memoir for him, in case he can’t afford Bill Ayers.
