Jokers and Scrooges

Saturday 10th October, 2020

The problem with ‘political jokes’ is said to be that they get elected. It takes all sorts to make a world, one may say, on seeing how the political leaders of most nations behave. People love to be entertained, and some leaders entertain them albeit unwittingly the way US President George H. W. Bush and his son President George W. Bush did. Their utterances replete with malapropism and other such slip-ups came to be dubbed Bushism, on which several interesting books have been written. There have been situations where professional comedians sought to run for President in the US. Among them were stand-up comedians, Stephen Colbert and Ron White, and Doug Stanhope of the black comedy fame. On seeing the conduct of those at the levers of power and their doings, US comedians may have thought they could do a better job. Fed up with serious politicians, who had let them down badly, the people of Ukraine elected a professional comedian—Volodymyr Zelensky—as their President, last year, when the term of a President who had become a joke came to an end in Sri Lanka.

Perhaps, the best known examples of Bushism are these: “One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.” “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we.” Incumbent US President Donald Trump is not far behind the father-son presidential duo where such fatuous statements are concerned, the latest being his tweet after leaving hospital: “I think it was like a blessing from God that I caught [COVID-19]. Trump has been calling coronavirus ‘the China virus’ to spite China, which he bashes, at every turn, to gain political traction at home, where his popularity ratings are plummeting rapidly. He would have the world believe that China created coronavirus. If so, what he has received by way of a divine blessing is something made in China, or God has chosen a ‘Chinese product’ to bless him with. So, why should he launch into tirades against China at the drop of a hat?

President Trump has also said in his message, “I want everybody to get the same treatment as your President because I feel great.” That is he wants to provide the anti-coronavirus drugs which, he says, have helped him feel great to all Americans free of charge! This runs counter to his policy on public health care. Whoever would have thought that Trump, of all people, would ever want the public to have anything free? He and his Republican backers have gone all out to torpedo Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act, introduced by President Barack Obama. The Trump administration went so far as to move the Supreme Court against Obamacare and filed a brief running into as many as 82 pages to support its case. If it succeeds in its endeavour, more than 23 million Americans will be deprived of healthcare coverage.

Now, thanks to his battle with COVID-19 and recent hospital stay, President Trump has realised the need for the people to have the same drugs as he! Coronavirus (or ‘China Virus’ according to the White House) seems to have had, on Trump, the same effect as the visitations from Marley’s wraith and three ghosts on Scrooge on a frigid Christmas Eve, in Dickens’ Christmas Carol; mean-spirited and tight-fisted Scrooge is transformed into a generous soul in the unputdownable novella.

One can only hope that the fear ‘China virus’ has instilled in Trump will soften his heart so that he will loosen his purse strings, pay income tax and stop his campaign against Obamacare.