I Don't Get It

Some things make no sense to me, like thong underwear or Donald Trump. Isn't it the purpose of underwear to serve as a barrier between your butt and your pants and not as crack floss every time you take a step? Doesn't seem to me like a very comfortable way to make it through your day. As for Donald Trump, the only difference between him and Charlie Sheen is it took decades of alcohol and drug abuse to make Charlie Sheen incoherently delusional. Trump comes by it naturally.

I don't understand my son walking across the house flashing cash like a pimp and telling us he's paying us back for games he ordered on his Nintendo DS. He's fourteen. When I was fourteen I was scraping together quarters so I could ride my bike a mile to the local video arcade next to Pathmark to play a few rounds of Centipede or MACH3. Maybe there'd be enough left for a slice of pizza from the storefront around the corner before heading home for dinner.

I'm confused by what's happened to cable television. Fifteen years ago, back when TLC still considered itself The Learning Channel and the Discovery Channel actually cared about science, it was possible to find a fair amount of proper programming to balance out the crap. These days we're accosted twenty-four-seven by inbred rejects and talentless celebutants presenting poorly scripted scenarios so cartoonishly ridiculous they make Gilligan's Island appear Shakespearean by comparison. Somewhere along the way society stopped laughing at these implausible idiots and started celebrating them. No offense, but if your vote in the upcoming presidential election will in any way be swayed by Duck Dynasty or the Duggars, then I'm not sure we're swimming in the same gene pool.

I don't understand why Chick-Fil-A -- probably the most uber-religiously homophobic restaurant chain in the United States -- installed outrageously phallic door handles in its public bathrooms. I can only imagine what Freud would have to say about that. It's as though a set designer from "Will & Grace" went through conversion therapy and found employment in Chick-Fil-A's design & construction department where he unsuccessfully tries to quell his latent-homosexually-inspired design sense. (That actually sounds like a pretty good premise for a television show.) No matter how thoroughly I wash my hands, or how clean the handle appears to be, I can't help feeling dirty every time I open the door. If only their sandwiches weren't so sanctimoniously delicious. 

I'm frequently bewildered by ear and nostril hair. When I was a young man, I had a considerably thick mane of blonde hair atop my head and practically no visible hair in either my ears or nostrils. These days I could braid my nose hair and mousse back the stuff growing out of my ears to cover the ever-thinning areas above my eyebrows. Speaking of which, the eyebrows are getting out of control, as well. Apparently, as traditional top-of-the-head hair abandons us, the ancillary hair areas kick into high gear. I can't wait to see what my armpits and lower back produce as I enter my fifties. 

I don't understand German. Nothing more to say there, really.

I'm bewildered by what's happened to the Republican Party. It sold its soul to the ultra-right-wing lunatic fringe back when the Tea Party movement rose to prominence and has never been able to buy it back. Rather than saying, "Thank you, Tea Partiers, but you'll need to run along and do your own thing somewhere else," Republican Party establishment embraced the upstarts and allowed them to corrupt what it means to be Republican. They even misrepresent the party's patron saint Ronald Reagan, misquoting him at every turn. In 1981 Regan wrote: "Illegal immigrants in considerable numbers have become productive members of our society and are a basic part of our work force. Those who have established equities in the United States should be recognized and accorded legal status." That sure doesn't sound the Republican message I've been hearing lately. I wasn't sure I would live long enough to witness a major political party being torn to tatters, but now I feel certain the Republican Party has only an ugly, lingering death in store. That's okay, though. Our country wasn't always divided into Republicans and Democrats. Some of our past Presidents belonged to the Whig Party, some to the Democrat-Republican Party, one to the Federalist Party, and George Washington didn't belong to any party.

I don't understand why, when only four people presently live in our house, there always are at least seventeen filled water sippers chilling in the refrigerator. I'm all for hydration, but it's gotten a little out of hand. To drink that much water on a daily basis would require mandatory catheterization. And, they leave precious little room for leftovers and other food items, which are the reasons we own the refrigerator in the first place.

Mostly, I don't understand where the years have gone. With one child in college and two preparing to take driver's ed this spring break, I'm having to come to terms with the fact that fart jokes and cartoon voices no longer make me a cool Dad. Our kids are turning into adults before our eyes and they're doing it without my permission. As their father, shouldn't I have some say in this matter?

© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Trump the Master Clown

Let's face it. When the circus comes to town, what are you most excited about? The trapeze artists? The lion tamers? Tiny dogs chasing each other around a ring and jumping through hoops for a kibble treat? Please... Everyone knows the world loves a clown.

Some people might be scared of clowns, and I sure wouldn't want to spot one coming at me in the middle of the night in a dark alley, but most of the applause and attention at any good circus goes to the clowns.

Clowns make us laugh, they perpetrate elaborate diversions from the seriously dangerous acts around them, and they help us spot the ridiculousness in the behavior of their fellow clowns. Which is why, in certain ways, I appreciate Donald Trump, because without him the state of pre-primary presidential posturing would be a yawnfest of liberal proportions.

Without Trump in the mix, wannabes such as Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Chris Christie, Ben Carson or Rand Paul might have the opportunity to convince the people of their parties they are not only qualified to serve as President, but that their motives for running are pure. Fortunately, Trump the master clown lept quick and early from the multi-color mini-car to embroil them in a war of one-upsmanship funnier than any slapstick routine or pie in the face. They trip over themselves to respond to Trump's latest heinous stance on immigration or women's health and, in many cases, firmly plant one of their oversized shoes in their grease-painted mouths.

The potential benefit of Trump's protracted three-ring act should be to show the voting public just how insincere and easily played all of the other clowns are. Like the Keystone Cops chasing after Buster Keaton, they repeatedly take the bait and fall about themselves playing a constant game of catch up. Instead of pandering to their base audiences and attempting to build their credibility, they end up competing for news coverage and social media mentions. They lack the courage to change the dialogue in order to state their own convictions because they have rare few to flaunt, save the burning conviction they deserve to be the next to sit in the Oval Office.

Even the media has taken the bait, none more so than FOX so-called-News. FOX has lost months sneering at Trump, downplaying his importance to the 2016 Presidential election, and engaging in his cherry-picked battles with the network during a time they otherwise would have spent tearing down the Democratic challengers and trumpeting the second coming of Christ in any or all of the Republican hopefuls. FOX News has unsuccessfully avoided joining the cavalcade of supporting clowns in Trump's performance.

I, for one, am not worried about Trump becoming our next president. Before all is done, he will have decided he has sufficiently increased the value of the name that has carried him through all the remarkably poor decisions in his life, and he will bow out of the race as ungracefully as he entered. Along the way, though, he will have flushed out a few phonies from the Republican field and made it easier for the rest of us to spot our neighboring racist, intolerant, homophobic, sexist boors who are loudly cheering his inflamed rhetoric.

For that, I am appreciative and award his present circus act a five-star rating.




Mark Feggeler