Trump's Locker Rooms: Bastions of the Entitled

At first I thought the locker rooms Donald Trump had in mind in explaining his crude comments about women were those used by sports teams. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one to think so, as numerous professional athletes and sports journalists rejected Trump’s contention of such offensive locker-room banter (http://nyti.ms/2dQbaUX).

Then it hit me. The locker rooms Trump had in mind were those at the ritzy, exclusive golf clubs he owns where powerful corporate titans feel empowered to say what they want about women, where their exploits—real and imagined—make them feel superior.

It is in the locker rooms of the entitled where high testosterone men strut their conquests, alleged and real. Trump is a modern day incarnate of Don Draper and his Mad Men cohorts of the 1950s and 1960s, where account executives like Pete could essentially rape and impregnate secretaries like Peggy without consequence. 

Until now, most women who were assaulted by such baseless men reacted as Peggy did. They hid their predicament. If there is any silver lining to Trump’s exposure it is that women are stepping forward to uncover his chronic, abusive behavior (http://nyti.ms/2dYsUQ7). 

Perhaps they will be examples to women in all walks of life who have had to live with systemic sexual assaults.

Trump has denied all alleged sexual assaults, but as with his denial of support for the invasion of Iraq, a tape from Howard Stern’s radio show trips him up. In 2006, during a  lengthy interview, he did not object when Stern sidekick Robin Quivers called him a “sexual predator.” 

He smiled and shrugged his shoulders in confirmation. All this while daughter Ivanka and son Donald Jr. sat next to him (https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomgara/heres-trumps-response-to-being-called-a-sexual-predator?utm_term=.sb8ZlQlbN#.cwEMpNpBw).

False Equivalency: I reject the notion of equal guilt associated with the gutter-level discourse of the presidential campaign.

I’m tired of equal distribution of guilt for the quality and tenor of the campaign. Let’s look at the primary campaigns of both parties: Democrats engaged in dialogue on issues worthy of would-be party nominees. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley didn’t insult each other. They debated policy. They argued about gun control. Trade policy. Health care. Income inequality. Support for student debt and college tuition.

Meanwhile, almost entirely egged on by Trump, Republicans argued about the size of hands and sex organs. Trump labeled his adversaries as “lyin,” “little” and “low energy,” while hardly ever discussing policy differences. For their part they called him a pathological liar, a sniveling coward, the biggest narcissist in American history, a con artist, uninformed, scary, a jerk, a clown, disgusting, a cancer and a barking carnival act, to name just a handful of epithets cast Trump’s way.

The name calling, and worse, have carried over to the main campaign. “Crooked, lyin’ Hillary,” Trump calls her. He’s intimated she should be stopped by gun toting members of the NRA. At last Sunday’s debate he said he wanted her jailed. 

He’s maligned veterans suffering from PTSD. He’s verbally attacked a former Miss Universe. Hillary has characterized his demeanor and temperament as unfit for the presidency. Yet, she has not labeled him with defamatory appellations, as his fellow party members have.

Any attempt to assess equal blame for the sleazy level of discourse in the run to the White House is wrong, misguided and in a very real sense another form of sexual assault on a woman whose only guilty of wanting to break the ultimate glass ceiling. 

Birdhouse, Bark-Mitzvah, Maxxed Out

Don’t tell the tax assessor, but we have a new residential unit on the Forseter homestead. It’s a single occupant birdhouse, lovingly painted by our grandson Finley.

I naturally was quick to hang it up next to the bird feeders and promptly sent off a picture to Finley’s parents, only to be cautioned that the little fellow used water color paint that needed a coating to insure it would not wash off in the first rain. A quick trip to the paint store solved that problem. So far, however, I haven’t noticed any birds taking up residency. Of course, this balmy spring-like weather could be the reason the vacancy sign is still lit.

I have noticed, meanwhile, that the Winter King Hawthorn tree we planted in our front yard in Finley Hawthorne Forseter’s honor has been attracting birds and even squirrels eager to munch on the red berries that sprouted on the branches in the late fall. Though horticulture Web sites say the berries last through the winter, when I looked outside a few minutes ago I noticed the berries were all gone. Ah, well...


Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Did you catch the latest craze, as in crazy. Seems some Jewish families are celebrating their dog’s “bark mitzvah” when the critter turns 13 in dog years, roughly when it is two years old. I kid you not. They drape a small prayer shawl over the canine’s body and place a yarmulke on the dog’s head. Here are mutt-shot views of some religiously-garbed hounds: http://www.google.com/search?q=bark+mitzvah&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=7dy&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnsu&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=9hcLT9m1KuLL0QGe6si3BQ&ved=0CGAQsAQ&biw=1215&bih=583. The potential for more excruciatingly bad puns—”muzzle tov,” chanting the “arf-Torah”—abound.

Several Christian denominations hold annual church services where all manner of animals are blessed, but for pure exhibitionism and, in my view, mockery of the religion, I can’t find a more silly and inane practice than that displayed by some of my co-religionists. See for yourself. Here are two examples of bark-mitzvahs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsNjEzblZDw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHyKrJgpQqM&feature=related. As one viewer commented on the second video, “The dogs are the most intelligent animals in this video.”


Maxxed Out: Has anyone else been amused by the choice of Pepsi Max to feature the NY Jets in one of its latest commercials? The gist of the spot is an inspirational half-time moment in the Jets locker room that exhorts them to victory.

Well, we all know the Jets failed to make the playoffs this year, the year coach Rex Ryan guaranteed a Super Bowl victory. Based on his size, Ryan no doubt would be better off drinking a reduced calorie beverage. But we also know from Jets players and other team observers that their locker room was far from a unified sanctuary. Indeed, rookie quarterback Greg McElroy labeled several players as selfish, not team-oriented. “I think the fact that we struggled at times this year really led to a really just corrupt mindset within the locker room,” McElroy told an Alabama radio station.

Pepsi Max is not the first, and surely won’t be the last, marketer to have a celebrity endorsement explode in its face because of inappropriate behavior or some other event beyond its control. My personal favorite happened in 2005. American Express built a campaign around Andy Roddick’s quest for the U.S. Open Tennis championship. It engaged then-budding comedian/actor Nick Kroll to play Roddick’s “mojo.” After Roddick would be shown going to sleep, his mojo would party and otherwise use his AmEx card to have a good time.

Based on his reaching the quarterfinals during the prior four U.S. Opens, American Express expected Roddick to play deep into the tournament. Kroll’s friends and acquaintances were eager to follow his mojo performance (we’ve known Nicky since our children went to school together— Dan played basketball with him on their championship elementary school team—and I’ve interviewed his father, Jules Kroll, the well-known financial investigator).

Someone, however, forgot to tell Roddick’s opening round opponent, Gilles Muller, about the multi-million dollar ad campaign. He knocked Roddick, and his mojo, out of the Open, in straight sets. I imagine AmEx executives and their ad agency contacts drank something a little stronger than Pepsi Max when that happened.