A picture is worth a thousand words. Someone once told us that. Either a Chinese or Japanese philosopher, playwright Henrik Ibsen or some advertising mogul named Fred Barnard back in 1921. Barnard credited the Japanese. I'm going with Confucius. Whoever was first, they all knew what they were talking about.
Of all the words written about Donald Trump's appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis -- how he tastelessly wore a shiny blue suit and blue tie to stand out in the field of black mourners, ignoring the dress protocol issued by the Vatican, how he staged a photo op with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelinsky, surely pretending to broker a peace plan in Ukraine -- none was more informative and symbolic of the Trump presidency than the image of him sitting there in the front row, next to an impeccably dressed Melania, sound asleep.
At the funeral. Of the pope.
Make America embarrassed again.
Of course, if you depended on major newspapers in this country to inform you about that little bit of clumsy protocol, you'd be out of luck. No pictures. Not even words. No nothing.
But someone had the pictures because they were all over social media and YouTube and there he was, "Dozing Donald", snoozing in the front row at the pope's funeral. Of course, even here the bets were hedged. With the steady media normalizing of his erratic behavior, Trump only "seemed" to be sleeping. That's what everyone seemed to say. Well, it seemed to me that there was no doubt the dotard was dozing.
Just look at the photos. There he is front and center, all in shiny blue, chin dropped to his chest, eyes comfortably closed, mouth dropped wide open. Been there, done that. That's the picture of a man deep in sleep, not in thoughts about the death of a beloved spiritual leader. In fact, not even able to fake it
But the New York Times, while taking pains to point out Donald's attire and Melania's, didn't bother with a Sleepy Don. Too normal apparently. Nothing strange about that. That's Trump.
Yet I seem to remember not so long ago when the public behavior of a president was all over the front pages of the daily newspapers in this country. Joe Biden, the president who rescued America from the depths of insanity and economic chaos of the Trump presidency, the man who served honorably as vice president of this country before that and decades as a United States Senator before that -- that Joe Biden -- the one with a stutter, wound up being called Sleepy Joe thanks to much of the press following the lead of Trump.
Biden was pressured not to run for reelection. Too old. Can't handle it. That Joe Biden had the grace to step aside and let someone else run against Trump, who thought he could win the election if Elon Musk could steal enough votes from Democrats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which he could. That Joe Biden managed to stay awake through the entire funeral of Pope Francis because he has empathy and compassion and respect for other people's feelings. Trump does not. But we all know that, right? So it's no big deal, right?
Wrong.
You know, looking at the photo of Dozing Donald, I wondered what was going through Melania's mind. As far as I know, she never once threw an elbow into his ribs, as the wife in any normal marriage might, and whisper, "Wake up, stupid!" Maybe she thought that with all the cameras around it might draw attention to him. Or maybe, she just really didn't care at this point. The second seems more likely to me.
Heck, most of the major media didn't seem to care. That's Trump, they say. He's 78 years old. He's weird. He rambles on and on nonsensically because he doesn't understand questions. He lies compulsively. He's a convicted felon and apparently a racist. He almost crashed the stock market and blames Ukraine for Russia invading it. He's forbidden to be associated with any charitable organization in New York State and ran a phony college. A judge said that what Trump did to a woman in the dressing room of a fancy Manhattan clothing store amounted to rape. He incited an attack on the United States Capitol and encouraged the hanging of his vice president. He was handed the most powerful military and most vibrant economy on the planet when he took office in January and has proceeded to make a mess of both. He insists that windmills kill whales and thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person.
So he fell asleep at the funeral of the pope. That's Trump. Who cares?
I care, dammit, that's who.
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