By
James Strong
When The Huffington Post announced on July 17 it would no longer cover republican presidential primary candidate Donald Trump under its politics section, but under its entertainment category instead, media, politicians and others yelled “Wait a minute!”
The Politicususa.com website and Mother Jones, for example, contend that Trump’s candidacy is news worthy of serious media scrutiny. But The HuffPost Washington Bureau Chief Ryan Grimm and Editorial Director Danny Shea counter that “Trump’s campaign is a sideshow” and that “[Trump] is objectively a clown show” meant to sucker the media into believing his candidacy is serious.
In fact, many do not find The HuffPost’s decision stunning at all, because a freak deserves to be treated like a freak, if he wants to.
Additionally, when evil is under attack, he hopes you believe his friends rather than his enemies. But many of Trump’s friends in the Republican Party have now become his enemies. And when freaks turn against freaks, the freak show becomes more refreshing and exciting.
Who can forget going to a circus or seeing a horror movie in which the bearded lady mud-wrestles a beautiful blonde-haired, one-eyed woman? Or a dwarf boxes an Andre the Giant and knocks him out with an uppercut to the kneecap?
Moving the Trump presidential primary campaign coverage from the political section to the entertainment section, then, makes perfect sense. More media outlets should follow The HuffPost’s example. Besides, no sadder proof of a politician’s worthless character makes us laugh than to expose his worthless ideas in a comedy of ridicule.
Freak shows flourished in Europe and America between 1800 and 1940, when ignorance surpassed compassion. But, nowadays, empathy frowns on freak shows, because freak shows make fun of people with physical deformities resulting from no fault of their own. They are disabled, not cartoon characters to be stared at and laughed at.
And as we would not make fun of people in which one leg is shorter than the other or who cannot hear or speak, we should not make fun of those with extreme physical deformities just because they perform in a freak show.
The Republican Party, on the other hand, is a freak show, a political freak show, showcasing people with such moral and psychological disabilities as hate, racism, neo-Nazism, tyranny, terrorism, lying, hypocrisy and incompetence.
Their disabilities are metaphysical. And though we empathize with those whose disabilities are physical, we can only condemn those whose maladies are metaphysical. They are legitimate targets of mockery, derision and scorn.
In them, comedy and satire blend well together, like a strawberry, mango smoothie.
Few better examples of the Republican Party freak show exist than its presidential primary campaigns. Beginning with the 2000 presidential primary, its presidential candidates have raised the political freak show to levels more scary than an evergreen tree with eels as leaves and worms dangling from its limbs.
Herman Cain and Ben Carson, for instance, the black Siamese Twins, have embarrassed themselves, as well as mating cockeyed coo-coo birds, in the 2012 and 2016 republican primary campaigns respectively, even as some whites hoped they would eat chicken wings from between their toes.
Cain had the nerve to believe he could sexually harass white women who worked for him when he was CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and think the media would not find out about it. Carson has displayed his ignorance of American politics, culture and history with such lack of rational thinking that his simplemindedness on the issues has already branded him an incompetent drunk on canal water.
And who can ignore Sarah Palin, the camel girl, the queen of stupid, whose logic lacks logic, whose morals are silhouettes on the curtain of hypocrisy and whose Christian beliefs lie somewhere between the lake of fire and castor oil? She dropped out of republican primary contention in 2012 when even she realized she was too dumb and dim-witted to be president.
Trump, on the other hand, is a rare species, a unique freak. He combines all the republican disabilities under one rug of blonde hair. His appeal to racists, his attractiveness to neo-Nazis, his allure in the presence of Tea Party bigots—as well as his anti-black, anti-Latino and anti-veteran stances—rest on a cold premise:
Trump might suffer from bipolar personal disorder, like an apartheid Afrikaner or a Hitler or a python being eaten from the inside by the alligator it just swallowed. Hence, as we can empathize with the Elephant Man, we cannot with Trump. With the Elephant Man, we cry; with Trump, we barf. With the Elephant Man, we feel a tender spot in our hearts; with Trump, we catch tendinitis.
Furthermore, as we can see in the last four republican presidents, whose administrations were bloated with policies and demons that lead to hate, racism, recession, high unemployment, the rise of terrorism and incompetence in dealing with natural disasters and political crises, a republican elected as president in 2016 will probably lead to another recession, another session of higher unemployment and another round of incompetence as eerie as a foggy night.
And so, with The Huffington Post’s decision to move coverage of Trump’s presidential primary campaign from the political section to the entertainment section, we can correctly jump and clap and sing and eat popcorn by the handful. Because when the Republican Party primary begins, the freaks come out.
Copyright © 2015 by James Strong. All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of this column, or any part of this column, without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Send your comments to strongpoints123@gmail.com.
