Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Art vs .Life

In 1970 Jerzy Kosinksi’s BEING THERE, a comic novel, sold well. Nine years later it became a movie starring Peter Sellers, Shirley MacClaine and Melvin Douglas, who won an Academy Award.

The story goes like this. A simple minded man called Chance the Gardiner, who gets most of his knowledge from mindlessly watching television, accidentally falls in with the elite. They take his dim-witted comments as metaphors, and by the end of the story Chance is about to become President.

The parallel with Donald tRump, another simple minded man, is evident (except that Chance is inherently nice). tRump knows next to nothing. He watches TV all day and then repeats, within hours, the banalities he hears there. Many Anericans take tRump’s babbling for wisdom.

:“Liberate Michigan” is a slogan tRump heard on Fox News and repeated two hours later. 

Life has imitated art.

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