She did it!

Cherchez la Scapenanny

My wife doesn’t want me to write about Trump. She is sick of Trump.

Hey. So am I. Who isn’t?

In fact I had in mind finessing the obligation to write about Trump-as-

                        FELON! FELON!

What rhymes with felon?

            An ex-President branded as felon,

            And not just like he-stole-a-melon . . .

Nothing there. Marginally funny only if you could squeeze watermelon into the meter, and nothing is to be gained by squeezing a watermelon.

Well, except this. My wife and I were on Lake Como, in Italy, and were taken on a tour by a local man who pointed out the spot where Mussolini was captured. Apparently the deposed dictator was trying to slip away in the back of a truck among several other men, but his bald head gave him away. “Il meloni!” someone cried, and the next thing Benito knew, he was hanging by his toes.

Why is Trump never compared to Mussolini? Body type is there –

But my wife is of course right. No point going there. At least not until Trump gives up on his signature hair-do. No, no, not even then. But there is still surely, in this moment, the obligation . . .

Here is how I was going to finesse it. I was going to declare myself to be under a marital gag order. And then I was going to quote a chunk from my book Alphabetter Juice, the entry at gag:

      “The Oxford English Dictionary “ventures that gag’s original meaning, to choke, would appear to be ‘imitative of the sound made in choking.’ So how did gag become associated with comedy? Before it meant a professional jokester’s one-liner, it meant a hoax, a trick, a lie, a tall tale. Makers of silent films referred to their carefully constructed stunts and illusions as gags; these became known as sight gags when movies added sound.

         “The  connection that leaps to mind, and that OED allows to be possible, is that the trickster’s gag is related ‘to the notion of thrusting something down the throat of a credulous person . . . ‘”

            Enough. The pleasures of Alphabetter Juice, or The Joy of Text, are too fine to be wasted on Trumpology.

            How many carefully chosen words have been lavished on the enormous sprawling heap of doo-doo that what’s his name keeps thrusting into our faces? There must be something more enlightening than pointing out, over and over, what an enormous heap of --

            Here’s what my wife wants me to write about: the trend to blaming things, when politicans get caught, on their wife.

I don’t put up signs, says Justice Sam Alito — my wife . . .

            I don’t collect gold bars, says Senator Bob Menendez — my wife . . .

            Indeed. And if Justice Clarence Thomas ever really gets backed into a corner, you know he’s going to be saying, “It wasn’t me, it was Ginni – I don’t even like big cigars.”

            In fact, if you think about it, the Trump defense was that he did it all for the sake of not letting his wife know he uh, did it, the other thing – that he was unfaithful to her. Aww. So his being adjudged a ***FELON***, now, is Melania’s fault.

            In a court of law, y’all, that defense did not float. Maybe, in the future, dirty dogs should find somebody other than women to blame things on.