The Sweet Smell of Excess
Creative Commons Licensed Image "Donald Trump - Caricature" by Donkey Hotey. Some rights reserved.
Day 53
I have noticed a weird thing happening when I watch the TV news these nights. Every time Trump is making a speech at a rally or being interviewed on one or all of the cable news networks, a strange smell comes into my TV den. Something malodorous.
At first, I thought it was an old salami sandwich that got tucked under my Official TV Critics Couch in my early years as the Oscar Madison of TV criticism.
Oddly, the aroma goes away by changing the dial to National Geographics, the History Channel, or anything not covering the election. It also works by turning the TV off.
On closer examination, the smell seemed to be wafting from the set not every time the Republican candidate was delivering a major or minor address, all of which seemed to be programmed by a pair of 10-years old competing in a Playstation game on another planet.
But only when he was telling a lie. In his case, this means the phenomenon was fairly continuous.
Kitman’s law states, if his mouth is open, he is lying.
Of course, it all may be my imagination, but I will swear on a stack of Trump policy speeches that this is as true as any of Trump’s facts. Or I need to send my TV set out for repair.
What I’m talking about is a smell like H2S, hydrogen sulfide, which I remember from my chemistry class at Brooklyn Tech is the smell better known as rotten egg, or in some cases, flatulence.
Some people can tolerate smells in Roquefort, Stilton, Limburger and other fine cheeses. To me, they stink, like Trump’s lies.
His lies are, and forgive me while I try to find the right word here, disgusting, despicable, detestable, execrable, revolting, repugnant, beneath contempt. They make me want to go out to the neighborhood vomitorium or take a shower. I guess I’ve got a sensitive nose.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who has noticed this campaign oddity. Some people want to throw up even if they can’t smell the Trump lie. Just seeing him on the news triggers the same emotion on the emetic scale.
There are only two things that can make the canary in my life, my wife, leave our TV den: Trump and NFL football.
The aroma in a fine cheese is caused by maggots during the cheese making process that gives it that certain something.
At its best, politics has never been the sweetest smelling of the arts. Trump is the maggot in the 2016 presidential campaign bringing its smell to a higher level.
To be fair, not everybody finds the smell offensive. There is a certain chemical affinity with those who like the smell of rotten eggs and Trump, just as there are those gourmets who love a Limburger and onion on pumpernickel, a culinary achievement for which Lord Sandwich did not die in vain.
Some people like the fragrance (Eau de Trump) that is now stinking up the joint, as we used to say in the hood, especially the folks who are already convinced he will make America great, a priori. It doesn’t matter how much or what he is lying about at any given time.
Proof of a lie is only evidence the egghead professors who do fact checking for deplorable, discreditable crooked newspapers and pundits are out to get the liar-in-chief.
I was especially reminded about all of this the day (Sept. 15, 2016) when the candidate dropped the big fat stink bomb in my TV den about the greatest lie of the century, that nonsense about the president not being born in the USA, a truth His Hairsprayness stuck to for an amazing five-year period.
A sweet smelling lie of such magnitude had such awesome powers of persuasiveness it still clings to the clothing and minds of 74% of registered Republicans, according to the latest poll, who still believe Obama was born in Kenya.
And, it goes without saying, was sneaked into the country as a baby so he could grow up to be president some day, after going to Harvard Law, where he was on the Review, be elected to Congress and the presidency for two terms. Amen, bros.
Like Nathan Hale, Trump may go down in history as the man who had only one lie to give to his country.
But let me tell you why he really will be remembered in the annals as one of the all-time great liars.
Even as he was reading his one line statement–sorry, folks, guess what, I’ve been lying the last five years— which sounded like a hostage statement, while his captors waited with drawn swords off camera, he managed to tack on yet another lie (crooked Hillary actually started the Birther crisis). That was more than chutzpah, but a genuine four blast of flatulence!
Some day medical science will tell us that the Republican candidate was not crazy, just suffering with a form of Tourette Syndrome that prevented him from telling the whole truth.
Meanwhile, if the polls are right, and Trump is gaining on crooked Hillary, folks, hold your noses. We are in for the smell of a lifetime in what remains of this most offal of elections.
30
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Marvin Kitman
Sept. 18, 2016