The Bloviating Ignoramus

Of the very few things on which we are able to agree halfway through 2015, I think the subject of today's essay as being among the three Most Obnoxious Living Americans (along with Gene Simmons of KISS, and your nomination) is one of them.

He isn’t just stupid, but loudly, brazenly, defiantly stupid, and an implacable braggart. Such is the beauty of the latest Eastern European beauty he was able to persuade to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, he tells us, that “grown men cry at the sight of her.” His wealth, he assures us, is inconceivably immense, as too are his business acumen and intellect. When, a few years ago, he was drawing attention to himself — his favorite recreation! — by pretending to be contemplating a run for the Presidency, he told interviewers that the principal reason voters should vote for him was that he “[would] do a really good job.”

He is of course Donald Trump, Ace Rhetorician!

Leading one to ask why, if he’s so rich and so savvy, he doesn’t have the sense to hire a writer to suggest rather less puerile and imbecilic responses to criticism. When Jon Stewart ridiculed him on The Daily Show, Trump tweeted, “I promise you that I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz – I mean Jon Stewart. Who, by the way, is totally overrated.” Nyah nyah nyah. Take that, overrated Jewboy!”

When ABC News’ resident stick-in-the-mud George Will, commenting on Trump’s participation in Mitt Romney presidential campaign, called Trump “a bloviating ignoramus,” Trump once again let fly a zingy accusation of overratedness, calling George “a totally overrated fool…with the little glasses and the hair slicked to the side.” Oh, Mr. Trump is a very fine one indeed for ridiculing the coiffures of others!

Don’t imagine the great man to be a one-trick pony, though. When the Salon writer Alex Pareene, who delights in taunting Trump in much the same way that some among us enjoy poking bears with pointed sticks, called him “America’s most famous fake mogul,” Trump left overrated uninvoked, and instead assured his Twitter followers that the writer “is known as a total joke in political circles. Hence, he writes for Loser Salon [capitalization his].”

Overrated! Totally overrated! Little glasses and slicked-hair! Loser! He’s Oscar Wilde reincarnate, with a large dollop of Dorothy Parker.

Perhaps the only time in recent memory he’s demonstrated even the most negligible graciousness was at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, at which Barack Obama, who’d released his long-form birth certificate to appease the “birther” loonies Trump had managed to get frothing at the mouth, joked, “[Trump] can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter – like, did we fake the moon landing?” Pouting up a storm when the cameras found him, Trump later credited the president with “a fine presentation.”

Donald Trump, Graciousness Incarnate!