The Badda Boom, Badda Bing Presidency

That yutz is getting in our heads.

My daughter says she dreamed about him. Psychotherapists report that he’s giving their clients panic attacks.

My wife proposes putting something in the car. “I’ll dump it in the trunk,” she says. I hear “dump” and “trunk” as “dunk” and “Trump.”

Scary, no?

I can date my arrival in the Trumpisphere to Halloween. When I looked at the jack o’ lanterns on display at the Penn State Arboretum I wondered if anyone had carved a likeness of The Donald into a pumpkin. A trumpkin, I thought, pleased with my play on words.

When I got home and googled “trumpkin,” I found, not for the first time, that I wasn’t nearly as clever as I thought I was. Halloween 2015 saw no end of variations on the  theme of Trump.

Or try googling “Trump hair” and see what images pop up: 

• A separated-at-birth pairing of The Donald’s wind-blown coif with the flowing silk atop an ear of corn
• A separated-at-birth pairing of Trump’s head with a blondish guinea pig (variation: a guinea pig shouldering a staff with a bundle tied to it with the caption, “Donald Trump’s hair has escaped and gone in search of a meaningful life”) 
• Dogs, cats, lions, orangutans and other fauna with Trumpian ‘dos
• A poster of Trump with the slogan “We Shall Overcomb”
• A poster of Trump with the slogan “If Trump Gets Elected There Will Be Hell Toupee.”

The first time I saw Trump make his lower lip over upper lip bully face, I thought of Mussolini, which turns out to be another popular separated-at-birth motif. 

Before last fall I was thinking of doing a presentation at a folklore conference on Putography – doctored photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin, usually bare-chested and riding a shark, a bear, an eagle or, my favorite, a Ritz cracker (Putin on the Ritz). But Trump has far surpassed Pootie-Poot (as W called him) and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il on the meme-o-meter, at least in the United States (I hear from my Chinese students that Kimlore is rampant in China).  So if I do submit a paper to the American Folklore Society this year I’ll have to put off Putin and go with Trumplore. 

Eight years ago I wrote that Hillary Clinton couldn’t be elected president because there were too many jokes about her. My idea was that beneath the humor lay a widespread and deep-seated antipathy toward her that foretold ballot-box doom. 

I now think I was completely wrong, even though Hillary did in fact lose to a certain junior senator from Illinois. While it may not be true that there’s no such thing as bad publicity – just ask John Edwards – the line between renown and notoriety has just about washed away. Better to dominate “the national conversation” — even if some of what is being said about you is less than flattering – than to be ignored. 

Just ask John Kasich. 

As a last resort, Marco Rubio – who, looks-wise, reminds me of my fifth-grade school picture — has taken to blaming the news media for pumping up Trump, thus forcing poor Marco to get down and dirty. 

But I think no one is more surprised by Trump’s staying power than the people who report on the dangerous nonsense he spews. Surely, the journos thought to themselves, when voters hear this latest pronouncement – about Mexicans, McCain, Muslims, etc. — they will see what an irresponsible blowhard this guy is and turn their attention elsewhere. 

Writer Douglas McGrath spoofed this very phenomenon in The New Yorker in January. The only explanation for Trump’s outrageous proposals, McGrath suggested, is that The Donald was using a run for the White House as a springboard for a return to the magical world of reality television. When the candidate saw that his campaign was working entirely too well and he might actually get the nomination, he panicked and insulted Mexicans. 

To his dismay, his poll numbers shot up. So he belittled John McCain’s experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.  Again, his numbers rose. So he said he’d bar all Muslims from entering the country…

“We have a serious problem,” Trump says. “I might win.”

Needless to say, there is no end of theories to account for Trump’s popularity. Here’s mine, which at least has the virtue of simplicity: The guy projects confidence, a rare quality in these uncertain times.

Most of us know there’s no easy solution to any of our most bedeviling problems. Realistic plans to defeat Isis, slow global warming or reduce income inequality, gun violence, and higher education and healthcare costs are in short supply. Whatever it is, Trump says, he’ll get it done, do a deal. Badda boom, badda bing. 

I still think this is a fling voters are having with Trump, and not a long-term relationship. But then, I’m not dreaming about the guy.

Yet.