On October 26, Hillary Rodham Clinton turned 69. To recognize this special event, she sent out a tweet accompanied by a black and white photo of herself as a child, “Happy birthday to this future president”. The tweet caused a stir generating comments such as @suze109 who responded “Did you buy yourself a present and cake, too?” and @everymahn who said, “Whoever is managing your social media account needs to be fired immediately. No one wishes themselves a happy birthday.”
On the very same day, a man dressed up as a construction worker and took a pick-axe and a sledgehammer to Donald Trump’s star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard. Beverly Hills resident Jamie Otis said that he attempted to remove the star which Trump received in 2007 for the reality series The Apprentice so that he could auction it off to raise money for the eleven women who have recently accused Trump of sexual assault. If found guilty of felony vandalism, Otis faces the possibility of one to three years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Otis, an activist who has been arrested 25 times, is the heir to the Otis Elevator Company.
While the Clinton birthday tweet and Trump’s smashed star may seem like totally unrelated topics, they are both accurate reflections of the two presidential campaigns. Clinton’s birthday tweet is representative of not only the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign, but also of the Clintons themselves, their values and their thought processes. Okay, we all get that Hillary Clinton did not send the tweet herself. Her social media team did. However, when one delegates one’s social media program to staff members it is inherent that the messaging sound genuine and also reflect well on the person who holds the twitter handle. Suffice it to say, Hillary’s happy birthday to me message was a misfire on so many levels. First of all, Clinton ostensibly referring to herself as the future president of the United States is yet another example of the hubris which has become synonymous with the Clinton dynasty. The election has not happened yet. Secondly, the fact that Clinton wished herself happy birthday shows just how out of touch she is and, for that matter, how out of touch her staff is. Thirdly, the fact that this tweet went out to seven million people is also indicative of “the extreme carelessness” which characterizes everything Clinton does, most notably her mishandling of classified information, including the deleting and “bleaching” of 30,000+ emails.
Trump’s broken star on Hollywood boulevard is emblematic of the way the Republican nominee has been treated throughout the primary and the general election campaign. Many people thought that his campaign was just a vanity exercise, a summer romance which would end after the Labor Day. Yet, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, President’s Day and Easter came and went, and Trump was still in the race. By Memorial Day, he was the last man standing from the original group of seventeen candidates. And just like Jamie Otis took a sledge hammer to Trump’s Hollywood star, the unlikely triumvirate of the left, the media and the Republican establishment kept trying to smash his campaign. The left did what they always do which is to attach the right-wing-wacko moniker on Trump, but combined it with an unprecedented vitriol.
The media was on the war path against Trump from the onset, with the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news outlets dispatching reporters to find some dirt on Trump. Representatives from traditional Republican media including the National Review and the Weekly Standard initiated “a never Trump” movement. House Speaker Paul Ryan finally endorsed Trump but his endorsement was lukewarm at best and that endorsement quickly evaporated when an eleven-year-old audiotape surfaced of Trump making lewd comments about women while en route to a cameo appearance on the day time drama Days of Our Lives. The Bush family, including former Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush and former presidential candidate Jeb Bush, all refused to endorse Trump. Oh and by the way, Trump’s companion in the “crude talk” was then Access Hollywood host Billy Bush, otherwise known as George Herbert Walker Bush’s nephew.
Now, less than two weeks from the election, the media continues to devote about seven to one coverage to the “sexual assault allegations” versus the daily drip drip from the WikiLeaks release of Hillary Clinton and her staff’s emails which reveal potential threats to national security, pay for play deals between Clinton’s State Department and The Clinton Foundation and much more.
The outrage about Trump’s broken star seems to be rather muted. In fact, some journalists, and I use the word loosely, were disappointed to learn that The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce plans to replace the star. The Toronto Star published an article titled “Trump’s Star Went Out Long before It Was Smashed”. Poetic but not exactly true since Trump is only three points behind Clinton nationally and actually in the lead in several battleground states including Florida and Ohio. On the other hand, LAist published an article titled “Trump’s Destroyed Walk of Fame Star will be Replaced. Sad!” Vibe published an article titled “Make Hollywood Boulevard Great Again: Man Takes a Sledgehammer to Donald Trump’s Star”.
Wait a moment, did these reporters just celebrate the vandalism of a California landmark? What are the chances that Hillary Clinton will send out a tweet condemning the destruction of Trump’s star? About as likely as her finding her deleted 30,000 emails.
Image; by Neelix; public domain; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_star_Hollywood_
Walk_of_Fame.JPG
