Friday, January 5, 2018

Fire and Fury Signifying Nothing

Michael Wolff’s new book is a glorified gossip column, catnip for a chattering class that loves to hear its anti-Trump prejudices echoed. The supposedly delicious scoop contained in the first excerpt from the book is manifestly silly and hopelessly stale — “Donald Trump Didn’t Want to Be President.” The chattering class has been sucking on that cracked thermometer for two years — before, during, and after the primaries and now pathetically grab for it again.
It is amusing to turn on the cable gabfests and listen to hyperventilating neurotics question the mental health of Trump, egotists decry his ego, and failed pols question his political intelligence. All of them are free to run against Trump in 2020. Let’s see how they do.
The tattling in the book is on par with generals complaining to Lincoln about Grant’s drinking. Even if true, who cares? And much of the sniping is not true or just magnified complaints heard in any administration. Has there ever been a White House that wasn’t “divided” and “chaotic,” that didn’t house clashing egos?
The hysterical gibbering over the book is also reminiscent of the “tell-alls” that came out during the Reagan years in which he was portrayed as dumb and his staffers brilliant. Even a cashiered Don Regan, after penning a catty memoir hewing to that genre, had to admit the stupidity of its premise after he cooled down: “Everyone there thought he was smarter than the president. Especially me.”

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