It was hysterical laughter, I could tell you, and really can be excused on those grounds. Or I could claim, with perfect justice, that it was certainly a normal reaction to stress. Times have been a little rough lately, what with losing my marriage and my country and all in the same year. True, I’m responsible for a lot of that, but not all, nor has it been a cakewalk. Anyway, I got up on stage last week and told John Roberts where to get off, and I protested last Saturday. The rage had shifted about, and when I saw what you can see below, I burst into giggles, which revved into gales of laughter.
Here it is:
Yes, it’s the East Wing, which has had a “VACANCY” sign brightly lit in neon outside on Pennsylvania Avenue for the last nine months. True, Melania isn’t there, but was that any reason to destroy it?
Usually I have to dig around in a story to get the rich lode that always lies beneath the surface. I mostly have to follow links endlessly, create underground burrows branching out of the rabbit hole, try to figure out when the Russians are openly putting their fingers on the scales of public opinion or have switched out the scale entirely, in the dead of night. It would take me a couple of hours to realize the enormity of the corruption as contrasted with the foolishness of the execution. I would have to tell you which corporations sold out and became “sponsors” of Trump’s Big Bawdy Ballroom. I would investigate if any legal authority existed in any possible world that justified a US president tearing down a part of the White House that is well over 100 years old and beloved, at least by some. I would be doing pearl-clutching, JD Vance would be chortling up his sleeve, and you, beloved reader, would be well-served.
I sat on the sofa and laughed.
It didn’t help that they were showing me this:
This is the White House?
Apparently so. But wait, here it all is, from another angle:
These are all screen shots, by the way, since the new recommendation is that anything that you don’t want AI (and its nefarious masters) to know, you should avoid trying to find on Google. It makes no sense, but nothing else does either, so that’s perfectly fine.
I could clutch the pearls until they burst, telling you that Trump had promised not to touch a single cubic centimeter of the existing White House. I could bewail the fact that what is a simple, quiet, unpretentious mansion (because it is that) has become an eyesore now that will become a national disgrace / joke later.
I’ve only seen the White House a couple of times, but both times I came away struck by how small it was, how gracefully it places itself in the landscape, how quiet and authoritative its voice was. It’s a voice that knows that to be heard in the riot of a ballroom, you must whisper. It’s the home of a country sure enough of itself that it didn’t need to impress.
Good God, the time I could have saved myself, having read obsessively about the crimes (real and imagined, current and historical) of Donald Trump, the atrocities of his administration, the wasteland of his soul! I could have skipped the last decade—during which I was only trying to alert you, Dear Reader, to the dangers ahead—and gone directly to the ball, like Cinderella. Yesterday, when the real news might have been that Venezuela and Colombia are getting a bit tired, really, of having their fishermen get blown out of their boats by United States military pretending to see drug smugglers in front of their eyes—well, what was I doing?
Laughing on the sofa!
Very occasionally, it all gets too much for me, as it did years ago, when the beloved mayor of Cataño got it into his head to go buy some art for his little community—a nice place with a rum factory (Barcardí—have you heard of it?) and a great view of the harbor and the old city. Well, Amolao (the mayor of Cataño) went off to Russia, perhaps having heard of the Hermitage, and the vast treasures it contains. There, he was an early advocate against DEI (“you don’t see any niggers there,” he said, and if he used the word why can’t I?) but did manage to meet a guy who believed, sensibly, that more is more. He was a sculptor, and he had made this, on the occasion of the 500th year of Columbus’s journey.
…which came to around 100 million or so…
…the lovely statue, as I was saying, had to be moved to out in the boonies.
It’s languished there, doing nothing more than causing the west side of the island of Puerto Rico to settle 10 millimeters or so every year.
Fortunately, Trump has better friends (or toadies) than Amolao, and our own governor (who is, by the way, a governess by the name of Jenniffer [yup, double “n’s” and double “f’s”] González) is a Republican of a very Trumpian stripe. It should be no problem to move the monstrosity to the White House lawn, where moguls can enjoy the site / sight while sipping Veuve Cliquot on the White House lawn.
Since I don’t know how to make AI draw for me, I leave it up to your fevered imagination to supply the picture.
It was all too much, and then I was not on the sofa but somehow in Nydia’s car, which is where she was first privileged to hear news of the ballroom, on the way to Costco.
“Trump got up on the roof yesterday to oversee the future site of the ballroom,” I was telling her.
“Were people shouting jump?”
“Only internally,” I told her. “But it’s a great idea, since of course Trump will never have a Presidential Library.”
“Of course not. The dude can’t read….”
“And we are going to have to put him somewhere, poor dear, close to medical facilities and with enough security to keep him wandering off and getting lost.”
Nydia’s eyes glazed with pleasure.
“Terrible,” she murmured, and patted my hand.
“It can be house arrest,” I told her, “in the ballroom, which should hold all of Trump’s most ardent and fervent supporters. We can put them there, behind the ornamental fake gold bars, and they can all look at each other. Their vocal chords having been surgically removed, of course, for all of our protection…”
“Wonderful,” said Nydia, “and when will that be?”
We turned into the parking lot at Costco, and I never had to answer.
