THE PUBLICAN CONVENTION
DAY1
The highlight of the first day was meant to be Melania's "first lady' speech.
It worked.Well crafted,well presented light stuff on her immigrant background,aspirations, her love of children and her hubby:The Donald.
Anyway no sooner had the convention closed for the night than all hell broke loose about a half dozen sentences of boilerplate having been lifted from Michelle Obama's speech eight years earlier.Its PLAGIARISM the media screamed/exulted/despaired/ejaculated--choose your own verb.Well yes it was.
But it hardly rose to the significance of stealing the life's work of a Nobel Laureate.
Needless to say Michelle Obama made no comment and no objection.She probably privately called Melania to sympathise.After all there are worse things for a beautiful,intelligent billionairess to worry about.She is married to Donald trump.
DAY 2
The plagiarism row played on and on and on.Never mind that President Trump wants to deport 11 million Mexicans,dump NATO's principle commitment,ban Muslims coming to America,scrap trade treaties and on.The real issue de jour was that incompetent staff work has failed to scrub a few lines from a puff speech.
All this was compounded,to the obvious[and justified]glee of the medya by the totally incompetent handling of the glitch by the Trump campaign staff.They tried to blame the candidates wife!
We were by now well into farce territory.
this is a convention photo taken by the New York Post.
No Hispanic elevator, just an endless corridor leading to a wall.
DAY 3
The campaign finally dumped the problem at the feet of a mid level aide who said she had inadvertently lifted the sentences from the Michelle Obama speech when she and Malania were reviewing what other candidates wives had said.No one believed her for a second,nobody could credit why the campaign team took so long to come up with this fiction.She offered to resign,Donald graciously refused and every body lives happily ever after.Except for NATO that is.
Speech day slots for several Publican big beasts.Texas senator ["Lying Ted'] Cruz gave a rabble rousing address but omitted to endorse the nominee.As a result he was booed from the stage,his wife had to be escorted from the hall by security and even the Texas delegation got into a snit with him.
This kind of drew attention away from the "unity" thing and Donald jnr's. speech.Very rude of Ted to drop something in the punch bowl and he may find himself not popular at future parties.
By about 11 pm Trump was finally able to introduce his running mate.Mike Pence.Pence began his speech by introducing himself as " a Christian, a Patriot and a Republican--in that order".This is what passes for oratorical flair in these parts.It went down very well and he continued in this vein.He knew his audience.
some churls seem to have a problem with their banner
I cannot see the problem myself
We had hoped to hear from Queen Sarah Palin by now.Alas it was not to be The Donald informs our court that she was reported to be too tired and emotional to make the trip from Alaska."Which is,I promise you,a long way a way and shares a border with the kingdom of my friend the "strong" Vlad the Putin"
DAY 4
Final day.All focus on the
Ivanka Trump Says Her Dad Will Fight For Equal Pay And Child Care.Who knew!! Those polish illegal construction workers must have been delighted.
Her speech was greeted in raptures by the convention.Whipping works so much better if you do not listen to the words.After the election,Hillary should offer her a policy job in the department of HHS.
Then came Big Daddy's speech.You will have read the reviews.http://variety.com/2016/tv/opinion/donald-trump-acceptance-speech-republican-national-convention-1201820141/ ; http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-succeeds-in-delivering-speech-no-one-will-want-to-plagiarize ; http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-republican-convention-day-four-20160721-snap-story.html
We live in the worst of times and we live in even worster times.Is that plagiarising Dickens?Be afraid be terribly afraid.Only I can save you.The immigrants are coming The immigrants are coming.This guff went on for an hour and fifteen minute.Longer than Obama and Romney combined in 2012.
Plenty of journos and blogers commented ,choose your own poison.
As you may be aware King Cyclops grew up in humble circumstances the son of Jewish Refugees in East
London.Now Bengali then Jewish and Irish.The currency at the time was not decimalised and was denominated in pounds,shillings and pence.Yiddish frequently found its way into the neighbourhood vocabulary.Hence the Yiddish/English term TRUMPENCE was a common part of our patoi.
I was reminded of this when I saw the campaign poster.
Trumpence meant "not much".Seems to be precisely what this ticket is worth.
Trumpence :definition from the urban dictionary
The amount of return on investment in a con job.
As in : I knew it was too good to be true, it's worth trumpence.
AN ASIDE
King Cyclops would just like to explore a little side phenomenon..Trump blames Americas ills on two caricatured villains: Hillary Clinton,a woman, and on Immigrants.He has worn his misogyny on his sleeve throughout the campaign. Yet he has married three times ,TWICE to immigrants.
So how come he chose immigrant women for two of his first three wives?
- Both wives were born into communist regimes.
- The first in Moravia in Czechoslovakia,now the Czech Republic and the second in Slovenia inYugoslavia,now Slovenia.
- Until the collapse of the Hapsburgs during WW I ,both areas had for centuries been integral parts of Austria.
- The Donald's grandfather was from Prussia, a part of Germany very close Austria,culturally,militarily,socially linguistically and in political attitudes.
- Both very reactionary and at the centre of Germanic Nationalism,anti semitism and conservatism.
- Perhaps Donald does not feel people of German/Austrian heritage and culture are the kinds of immigrants he objects to.
King Cyclops first interaction with a Slovene was back in 1972.The country was still communist and part of Yugoslavia.The King was attending a month long seminar on Urban Planning in Saltzburg. There were attendees from across europe-EAST and WEST.The location was at Schloss Leopoldskron for hundreds of years the palace of the Bishops of Saltzburg. Until commandeered by the US Army in 1945.It was now owned and run by a US Foundation.
There I met a Slovenian architect.It was clear he wanted nothing to do with the Serb and Croat aparatchiks in attendance.He assured me that Slovenia was not like the rest of Yugoslavia but still culturally Austrian and anti communist.He skied most week ends crossing the Austrian border at will.His family obviously lived very well with several residences and servants.I believe that his parents were well established within the local Nomenclatura.
The quirk of this divertion is that the Sclosss was in fact the location where,in 1965, the musical The Sound of Music was filmed.My Slovenian colleague was very amused by this as he assured me Slovenes identified very much with the Van Trapp family.With much more legitimacy "than [other] Austrians who were nearly all Nazis anyway", he assured me.He often hummed "Eidelweiss" after a few stein in the bier keller at the Schloss.
I was not surprised therefore, that at the end of the Publican Convention Melania the Slovene, led the Von TRU[mpf]P family on stage to rapturous applause as they sang a medley from the Sound of Music.
The VON TRU[mpf]P Family
Whether the Donald saw the irony of playing captain Von Trapp is not known.
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