Conservative columnist David Brooks writes in the New York Times today: No, Not Trump, Not ever. The article title mirrors this blog’s central theme, even if Brooks uses a slightly more up market phrasing.
Brooks is vexed. He takes himself to task. He eats some crow. He respects the voter’s intentions. He questions the choice of messenger. Right payload, wrong delivery vehicle.
Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out. He insults the office Abraham Lincoln once occupied by running for it with less preparation than most of us would undertake to buy a sofa.
Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.
Later in his piece, Brooks says of Trump:
He brags incessantly about his alleged prowess, like how far he can hit a golf ball. “Do I hit it long? Is Trump strong?” he asks.
This rhyming couplet immediately brought to mind a scene in the movie Happy Gilmore, which I think is a rather good satire of professional golfing pretension.
Happy Gilmore is a sports comedy film (1996, MCA Universal, 1 hr:32 min). Happy (played by Adam Sandler) is a failed minor league hockey player with serious anger management issues. He wins a spot on the Professional Golf Tour in order to earn money so that his grandmother may save her house from the IRS. The villain is a high flying tour pro named Shooter McGavin (played by Christopher McDonald), an arrogant ponce with an entitlement problem.
About 40 minutes into the film (40:28), the golf pro Shooter accepts his check for a tournament win in which Gilmore has finished dead last. He then accosts Happy in the clubhouse bar to gloat and throw down what amounts to an implicit virility equipment measuring challenge to him, sort of like what happened at a recent Republican debate.
View the Trailer for Happy Gilmore (1996)
Happy starts to react with a violent physical gesture, but holds off. In the end Gilmore responds with rhyming ridicule, as Shooter threatens him in retreat:
Shooter McGavin: Don’t turn your back on me.
Listen, this is Shooter’s tour.
I worked hard, paid my dues–
now it’s Shooter’s turn.
Shooter won’t let his reign at the top
be spoiIed by some freak.
Shooter McGavin: Just stay out of my way.
Or you’ll pay.
Listen to what I say.
Happy Gilmore: How about I just go eat some hay?
I couId make things out of clay
and lay by the bay.
I just may.
What do you say?
(at 42:00- 42:15)
Christopher McDonald plays Shooter McGavin, the insufferable pro who is sure he will win the championship because it is his turn to reign. McDonald is an accomplished actor, born in New York, whose mother was a real estate agent. McDonald, who is 6’3’’ tall and has sandy blond hair, bears some physical resemblance to a younger, fitter, slightly taller version of Donald Trump.
McDonald* gave an interview about his role to IMDb in 2011:
I turned that movie down twice. I had seen Adam [Adam Sandler] in a movie called Billy Madison (1995), and I’d seen him on Saturday Night Live (1975), and I thought he was funny. Opera Man wasn’t exactly my favorite. “I am Opera Man! I think this is funny!” But I turned it down because I was really tired. I’d just done two movies back-to-back in Vancouver.
But they said, “They’d really like for you to play this Shooter McGavin guy.” And I’m, like, “Ugh, it’s another bad guy. I don’t wanna do that.” “Yeah, but at least it’s a funny movie.” And it did look pretty funny. So that weekend, I played a golf tournament in Seattle, and I won. And I thought, “You know, it would be fun to do that golf movie, maybe.”
So I drove back up to Vancouver when I heard that they were still looking, and I said, “I want to meet Adam.” And within 15 minutes, I knew I had to do this movie, ’cause this man was absolutely sick and funny and very smart–very, very smart. And that’s when I decided it would be a really good idea to do it.
But I had a lot of fun doing that part as a villain who was in on the joke. I liked that part about it, that I could play it that way, and they let me do it. Also, my golf game got sick. I was playing golf five hours a day for six days a week. It was nutty. I was pretty good at that time. And now I basically get to play golf for free for the rest of my life, which is pretty good, too.
Professional movie critics weren’t especially thrilled with the movie, shown by its 5.6/10 score from the Rotten Tomatoes movie rating site. However, the audience reviews were stronger (average score 3.75/5). Of 990,00 movie fans who offered reviews, 85% liked the film. On the Internet Move Database (IMDb), the movie was rated by 150,901 visitors with an average score of 7.0/10. The movie did $41.0 million of box office business. It is currently available for streaming on Amazon, YouTube, and iTunes. Regular folks got it.
A pertinent Hollywood video clip may be worth 10,000 words in explanatory power. The fictional Happy Gilmore is a real Joe Six-Pack who struggles with serious financial woes and personal problems to try and save his grandma’s house. Rival McGavin (the Trump stand-in) is a rich, nasty creep who wants it all only for himself: titles, money, prestige, even the grandma’s house in foreclosure.
Shooter’s contemptuous threats, delivered in silly rhyme, are strangely evocative of Trump’s recent actual threats (not in couplets) against rally protestors, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and the Republican Convention process. Shooter even refers to himself in the self-important 3rd person style, so often used by Trump, but rarely by ordinary folks.
It would also be mildly ironic that the movie is so fixed around professional golf, Trump’s sport of choice (prestige, competition, prize money, and bucolic surroundings), and the source of much of his real estate wealth, except that irony is on life-support in this political season of Trump.
Critics gave the movie only middling scores, but regular movie fans rather liked it. In the end, of course, Gilmore triumphs in the tournament at the 18th hole, gets the girl, wins the money, and saves his grandmother’s house. A quadfecta. A happy ending.
The Trump Effect has been extra slow to wear off, and permanent intoxication may be a result in some quarters. Brooks is right about one central point. Trump’s personal flaws are so great, they will drown out the substance of the message he claims he wants to carry in a general election. A different missile delivery system is needed to ensure success, most urgently.
The real life ending for this story is still in play.
*McDonald’s favorite professional football team is the Buffalo Bills. Football is Trump’s second favorite sport, after golf. In 2014, Trump negotiated to buy the NFL Buffalo Bills franchise, and couldn’t make a deal. After he lost, he unleashed a Twitter tirade in typical fashion, and declared the team and the city of Buffalo would be sorry. The 2014 episode was not Trump’s first failure to secure an NFL franchise.
TV game show host Bob Barker had a hilarious profane cameo role as the golf partner for Happy at one tournament. He dominated with some flashy movie fisticuffs against his young partner. Barker was playing. Trump is??
.