So long, Kellyanne

You had to wonder how long the Conways could keep up this charade. While one defends the President no matter how daft his tweets or other public statements, the other demeans him at every turn. The two had become the James Carville and Mary Matalin of the Trump era. You have to think they even modeled their relationship upon the infamous feuding couple of the 90s.

Now the game is over. Kellyanne has officially handed in her resignation and George has given up his work at the Lincoln Project, which has been running scorching ads 24/7 against Trump. They both claim they are trying to salvage what's left of their home life after their oldest daughter, Claudia, publicly disowned them on twitter and tiktok. One can hardly blame her. It's bad enough to watch your mother prostitute herself to Trump, but you have a father who loves nothing more than to disparage Trump at every turn, knowing full well how this reflects on her mother. One can only imagine how their other three children feel.

As much as James and Mary went after each other in the 90s over Bill Clinton, it didn't become this toxic. They held onto their marriage and their two children. But in the Age of Trump, everything this guy touches becomes toxic. You might call him the Toxic Avenger.

If that weren't bad enough, Trump is having to deal with the fallout from a menage a trois his Evangelical pal Jerry Falwell Jr. engaged in with his wife and her lover. Jerry apparently took the role of voyeur in the group. Sex scandals are common in the televangelical community as well as with Trump, but having this play out during his highly choreographed convention can't sit well with the Reality Show Host in Chief. For the record, the Falwells have three children who are being subjected to this scandal.

All this playing out on twitter seems fitting for a president who has made this social media platform an open forum for his dubious policies and petty grievances. He's laid bare his administration for all to see, yet still complains that Obama is spying on him. There really was no reason for those highly unusual NDAs, as the gelatinous toxic ooze spills over the social and news media.

Through it all there has been Kellyanne, defending him at every turn, to the point it often became so comical she had to laugh as well. For her it was just a job. I don't think she had any special affinity for Trump. She just saw him as the direction the country took in 2016 and figured she would get as much mileage out of it as she could. Whether she remains a darling to conservatives remains to be seen, but for now Kellyanne and George are hoping to patch up whatever relationship they have left with their family. Claudia may be a lost cause, but they still have Vanessa, Charlotte and George Jr.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog