There is reason to believe I have to reroute some of the back roads on the road map of my thinking parts. I have been spending a lot of time in Elizabethan England lately due to my obsession with who I think Shakespeare really was. There are a lot of dark alleys to be plumbed on that section of the map. I really admire the Roland Emmerich film Anonymous about Edward deVere, the Earl of Oxford being the real writer behind the works of Shakespeare, but I do recognize that it is a work a fiction, and an altered-history work of fantasy fiction at that. So I find myself not yet ready to tackle that particular essay in the Shakespeare series as yet. More think time and creative-mixing time is needed. I need to stop at one of the quaint little mental inns on that particular Elizabethan back road and get some much needed rest for my Elizabethan conspiracy muscles.
Meanwhile back in the real world, Trumpzilla has been busy wrecking the world I live in with a bleak inauguration speech written by Steve Bannon that works its fire-breathing magic to blacken the hearts and perceptions of people I love and care about who also happen to be staunch conservatives. My Facebook feed is up in arms about how many people actually attended the inauguration ceremony and how unfair the media is for trying to make it seem like Trump’s celebration parade was a deserted wasteland when in reality it was… well… what’s a synonym for deserted wasteland that won’t offend conservatives who will bend or break any truth to defend Trumpzilla’s turkey-tweets?
But then, as I was going to QT for my morning caffeine-addict’s fix of Diet Coke, I heard Lionel Richie’s song “Say You, Say Me” playing on the radio. Ah, the perfect metaphor. It is a song used as the theme song from the 1986 movie White Nights about a Russian ballet star who has defected to the US during the Cold War and then was in a plane accident-incident that put him back in the Russians’ clutches. The movie stars Mikhail Baryshnikov, an actual Russian ballet star turned defector, and Gregory Hines, the American tap dancer. It is a beautiful movie that features amazing dance sequences, Russian conflict of interests because the dancer wants to be free and yet misses his homeland and culture, and a resolution involving intrigue and escape. In many ways, the plot, centered around a Russian threat and dark days in a place where the sun doesn’t set, is exactly what we are going through with Trumpzilla. But the song is about two people communicating and eventually “coming together, naturally”.
It started me thinking about the purpose of this blog. I mean, you obviously know that this blog is really about me talking to myself about myself, if you are one of those crazy few who actually read this far through a goopy blog post like this. I use this blog to think about myself, the world around me, and even sometimes, like now, to think about thinking. Yet, I have a duty to the reader to reach that point where our thinking comes together, naturally. If not, then why bother to post and publish at all?
So here’s what I think about the Shakespeare question, written in the tavern room at the inn on parchment… with a quill pen. The real Shakespeare was a writer just like me, writing for himself. And he discovered through the play-writing process that he had to share that writing for himself with the great wide world, because the Prospero’s magic of it could change the world for everybody. That is the real purpose of Shakespeare’s existence, no matter who he really was. And that is the real purpose of my existence as well, even if I turn out to be nothing more than one of the top hundred best writers that no one ever actually read.
Catch a Falling Star 
When You Can’t Laugh at the Clowns
It is sad that Ringling Brothers, Barnum, & Bailey will be closing for good this coming May. I have personally gone to the circus and enjoyed the spectacle under the big top (though actually in arenas) about fifteen times, first with my parents and then with my own kids. I loved the elephants, the wire-walkers, the lion tamers, and I laughed at the clowns. And now that will no longer be possible. I have gradually lost more and more of the most important things in my life as I have gotten older. I lost mobility with arthritis. I have lost financial security through health problems. I have lost the ability to do the job I devoted my life to and so deeply loved. And now I can no longer laugh at the clowns.
The problem is not that there are no clowns left, even though most of the greatest ones, Emmett Kelly, Bob Keeshan, Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, and the man who played Bozo, have all passed on. The problem is not that my kids are afraid of clowns, scared to death of people who aggressively get right up in your face while theirs is covered with grease paint (especially since my kids are now grown and can sock the clown in his painted mush if he gets too close). The problem isn’t even that the clowns are not funny any more.
The problem is that the Clown in Chief has killed the laughter. He has become an agent of instability and chaos. When he is mocked brilliantly by Alec Baldwin on Saturday Night Live, he has to mount a tweet storm on Twitter and uses his limited twit-wit to angrily denounce and threaten and belittle instead of laughing at the jokes as other politicians like the current President and Vice President have graciously done, even sometimes using self-deprecating humor to get in on the jokes themselves. Even notoriously humorless political clowns like Ted Cruz and Sarah Palin have more grace in ignoring mockery and smiling at insults than this Great Orange Face that we put in charge of the country’s most serious business.
The ability to laugh at oneself is a very serious thing. When the whole “golden showers” business made it into the national debate, this manic moron did not make it seem mere political hum-buggery by laughing it off. No, he got deeply offended and defensive, the same way a person who is actually guilty of the accusation would react. So, if it is not true, the Crybaby in Chief has only bolstered our belief that it is most probably true. As ridiculous as the accusation sounds, you have to admit that Trump’s behavior in the past makes you at least entertain the possibility that it is a true thing that he has done.
And now, he has over-reacted again, this time to the very real concerns raised by Congressman John Lewis, an honest-to-God civil rights hero, with cruel and crusty criticism that lowers my respect for Trump as well as lowering all future expectations. The man isn’t even sworn in yet, and he has already shown such bilious badness in his character that I truly dread living in this country under his rule.
I am a man who lives to laugh, and laughs to live. That is how I overcome the things that bother me as well as the things that hurt me. I use laughter as medicine, not as a weapon. And I hate to see the viruses in our society that I have always been able to inoculate myself against with humor become totally drug-resistant in that way.
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Filed under angry rant, clowns, commentary, feeling sorry for myself, humor, politics, satire
Tagged as Bozo is dead, clowns, Donald Trump, politics, rant, Ringling Brothers closing