Could you coo -
could you care -
for a cunning con-man
we could share ?
Just as nobody can reasonably fault
George and Ira Gershwin for abusive
third-party travesties of their mu-
sic and lyrics, no one can reason-
ably credit Broadway Donny Thump-
Thump for originality in anything.
Still, he deployed his best Dirty Old
Man tone of voice at his latest rally,
the other night, tempting us all to a
candybar of his snidest oozing treacle.
Channeling Henry Fonda's Tom Joad to
his mother, in the final scene of The
Grapes of Wrath, he gave us the phan-
tom of the oppressed male child, hound-
ed into oblivion by a virago he'd nev-
er met, in a staggering corruption of
the testimony of the strongest witness
yet to speak against his character and
social set. "Reciting facts," his nit-
wit press secretary said; "a factual
rendition," his South Carolinian Sen-
ate toady intoned.
They called this, "mockery," but it
was of a worse than insulting kind.
It was an enlistment of a following
for the proposition that a President
may corrupt the implementation of
law with impunity. That's almost an
original idea, but for Iago.
But it's Friday, inherently a good
day; and one's thoughts turn to the
brighter side of seduction as we en-
gage with it in this Depression. In
1930, I've Got a Crush on You was
presented in the Gershwins' Strike
Up the Band; and until this week I
have never regretted that absolute-
ly everyone knows it by heart. Now
we know to ask, what sort of heart?
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