Take Donald Trump... Please!

Trump enthusiasts and apologists--as well as people who can't stand the man and are just trying to comprehend his rise--often explain his appeal by saying that he is "funny."  I suppose he is, in the same way that fart jokes are funny--they're amusing once in a while, but they do get tiresome and repetitive.  And an appreciation for fart jokes is not the kind of thing most people take pride in.  A recent instance of Trumpian "humor" features The Donald splashing his adoring audience with a water bottle and yelling, "It's Rubio!"--a reference to his rival's well-documented thirstiness during a response to a State of the Union Address.

I doubt Trump's acolytes realize the irony in celebrating their idol's "sense of humor," while demonizing President Obama--arguably the funniest man ever to occupy the Oval Office.  Love him or hate him, few would dispute that the guy has great comic timing.  But more importantly, we are selecting a president, right, not a comedian-in-chief.  And if we are electing a comedian, we can certainly do better than Trump, right?  Jon Stewart must be itching for a new gig by now, no?

Trumped

Today, in honor of Black History Month, a staff member at my college gave a presentation on Liberia.  The presentation was well-attended and thorough and interesting.  At one point, the presenter showed a slide explaining that, in the heyday of colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Liberia and Ethiopia were the only two African nations not annexed, colonized, or otherwise exploited by Western powers.  Instead of finding this inspiring, however, all I could hear was Donald Trump's voice in my head, saying, "That's disgraceful! Disgraceful! Now if I had been president back then, we woulda had one-hundred percent colonization of Africa!  Am I right?  It woulda been unbelievable!"

This campaign is really getting to me.