Stormy Daniels and Our Debilitated Democracy
If people will vote for a candidate on the basis of a headline in the National Enquirer, are they too intellectually and morally shabby to vote
By
David Gottfried
(And some people dare to assert that Jews are the most obnoxious people in the marketplace)
..
Trump’s greatest crime was his assault on democracy, but the Stormy Daniels trial makes me wonder if our democracy, as it limps along today, should be saved.
David Pecker, CEO of the National Enquirer, testified that he disseminated false stories to help Trump get elected. Among other things, his extremely popular and disgusting rag had a screeching headline accusing the father one of Trump’s competitors in 2016, Ted Cruz, of murdering JFK. Anyone (with at least half a brain) who had read the Enquirer story would have known that the murder charge was fanciful bullshit. However, Pecker explained that the only thing that matters is the damning headline, savored by gossipy morons who move their lips while they read the headline while on a supermarket checkout line.
Upon reading Pecker’s testimony, my mind was assaulted with a revolting image. I saw a very fat women, buying diet coke to lose weight, along with ring dings, frozen lasagna, frozen pizza and frozen strawberry short cake, muttering to herself, “Oh, my G-d, I thought Ted Cruz was cute, but it turns out he’s a murderer. I can’t wait to tell Sylvia, Sally, Cherise and Sherona.” Then, my quasi-hallucinogenic mind heard a line from the Rolling Stones kick-ass masterpiece, “Brown Sugar”: “Hear him whip the Women just around midnight,” and I wanted to be transported to a Kmart or some other vulgar emporium, sporting an enormous and scintillating whip, where I would proceed to whip the lipid-laden ladies.
I know I will offend my fellow liberals, but I am starting to get very weary when I hear people demand that we should make it easier and easier for people to vote. As I age, I am beginning to become as sarcastic and as bitchy as Sandra Day Oconner, the first women appointed to the Supreme Court, who upon hearing counsel argue that Gore voters had trouble navigating Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, said something to the effect that why can’t those stupid a-holes figure out a ballot. (Actually, she was all wrong; that ballot was a monumental mess and anyone who didn’t have 20/20 vision wouldn’t be able to hack it.)
After years and years of being a studious, philanthropic nerdish liberal, I am becoming a snide, selfish conservative SOB. Who the fuck is stupid enough to allow his political choices to be influenced by headlines in the National Enquirer.
And I remember how disgusted I was in 2009 and 2010. At that time, so many Blacks and Latinos said to me that they had high hopes for Obama but that “he isn’t doing nothing.” I told them that he was being blocked by Republicans in Congress, that he can’t snap his fingers and pass a new law, and that he needed the support of at least a few Republicans to make stuff happen. The blacks and Latinos seemed perplexed, did not seem to have any idea of what a congressman might do and soon tired of the conversation and desperately needed to listen to some tuneless, amelodic hip hop music.
In November of 2010, blacks, Latinos and young people, apparently oblivious to the existence of Congress, stayed home in droves, and the election results so emphatically renounced the Democrats that it seemed as if Obama had been burned in effigy.
On the day after the November 2010 election, I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist. The receptionist, a polite and attractive Latina, wondered why so many people seemed irritated by something that had happened in the news. She asked me, “Was there some sort of, what you call it, election last night.”
The poor whites who vote for Trump because of a headline in the National Enquirer are stupid; the poor blacks who did not vote in 2010 because Obama did not immediately solve their problems are stupid; and I just can’t stand suffering the sorry mass of stupid fucks who happen to be my countrymen.