BONUS: Excuse me for this moment of diversion
`The Apprentice' gives insight into how Donald Trump became Donald Trump
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Looking back almost a week later, I feel a little ashamed.
Because of the Super Bowl, the first parade of the Mardi Gras season - the Chewbacchus Parade - was being held a week early, so last Saturday night after a brutal week of frightening news from the Trump administration I found myself hiking down to the French Quarter to see my first Mardi Gras parade.
I needed a diversion and New Orleans is all about diversions.
As a a Mardi Gras novice, I did not know what to expect.
I've never been to a Mardi Gras parade.
Never imagined there were 33 parades over the next month.
I now have a parade app on my phone that shows the route of every parade and tracks it in real time.
What I found on Decatur Street Saturday night was such an assault on the senses, it defies description. The closest I can come is the wildest, most extreme Halloween party I have ever witnessed, although there were no pumpkins or candy corn.
I was told this parade was a homage to Star Wars and over those first 15 minutes I not only saw a pink Chewbacchu, but various Star Wars spacecrafts, a cardboard R2 D2, Darth Vader of various sizes and shapes and maybe my favorite moment of the the night - the Leia-jorettes, a troupe of Princess Leia want-a be's twirling light sabers instead of batons.
And Princess Leia could dance. All of them.
In fact, every single person in New Orleans can dance.
Of course every single person in the parade had a drink, too.
For more than two hours, the smile remained glued to my face.
Star Wars was just the beginning with the themes changing without rhyme or reason.
There were brass bands, burlesque, amazing gymnastic feats, alien space crafts and mechanical monsters.
And did I mention the dancing? Even the monsters were dancing.
It was dark, it was silly, it was colorful, it was ridiculous and it often devolved into debauchery. Well, it is New Orleans.
I even saw the Blues Brothers and wondered what they were doing there. I swear Belushi was back from the dead.
After more than two hours, I looked down Decatur Street and there was no end in sight.
The parade was still coming. For all I know, it may be still going.
As I headed back to the Warehouse District, I saw a series of floats depicting the climatic scene in Jaws.
On Captain Quint's ill-fated boat was the sign, "I'm going to need a bigger float."
That was brust out loud laughing funny while watching a Great White Shark in pursuit.
Everyone was so happy.
This was a community interacting and being silly and having fun.
It's what America was supposed to be.
It's what having all those freedoms are all about.
But there was part of me that wondered if any of Chewbacchus Krewe were paying attention to what was happening the past two weeks.
Were they worried?
Did they understand the threats we are all facing?
It was the farthest thing from what was happening in the real world.
This weekend, it will be the Super Bowl and the vast majority of the country will gather around the television in a three-hour diversion of drinking and eating.
Something tells me Elon Musk won't be watching the game.
The Apprentice
February is movie month for me.
Every year the goal is to watch every single movie nominated for an Academy Award, including documentaries, shorts and animated features.
I've seen 7 of the 10 Best Picture nominees so far. The Bob Dylan flick is leading the pack.
But despite my goal of seeing all the movies, there was one movie I was passionately resisting - The Apprentice - especially after the events of the past two weeks. The last thing I needed in my down time was more Donald Trump.
But my curiosity got the best of me.
Garnering nominations for Best Actor, Sebastian Stan as Trump, and Best Supporting Actor, Jeremy Strong (Succession) as Roy Cohn, I found the movie provided more insights into how Donald Trump became Donald Trump than anything previously.
It recounted his early days in New York collecting rent from deadbeat tenants in his father's buildings in Queens followed by his grooming at the hands of Cohn.
When it came out in October, Trump trashed the movie online.
"A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, ‘The Apprentice’ (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully ‘bomb,'” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “It’s a cheap, defamatory, and politically disgusting hatchet job, put out right before the 2024 Presidential Election, to try and hurt the Greatest Political Movement in the History of our Country, ‘MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!'”
After watching the movie, I think the behavior we see every day in public is far worse than anything in the movie.
On one movie poster, The Apprentice is subtitled "An American horror story."
That seems about right.
Take action
Several of Front Page readers have been promoting action by citizens about the illegal actions being taken in Washington.
Several U.S. senators reported that phone calls to their offices are overwhelming the system.
Here was the instructions from one reader:
Supporters of democracy must act immediately to bring overwhelming attention to what the Trump administration is attempting – every indication that this is a coup:
- Call/write/meet Senators Gillibrand & Schumer to oppose Vought for Director of OMB – ask them to use every means available to delay, deny, obstruct. See below for script.
- Gillibrand 518-431-0120; Schumer 518-431-4070. Note that if you leave a voicemail message, it must be relatively short – you will only have time to state the basic complain.
-Their emails if you cannot get through via phone:
- https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/contact/email-me/
- https://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact/message-chuck
Last night, Democratic senators filibuster the vote for Vought on the Senate floor and said they would do it all night long.
Ken Tingley spent more than four decades working in small community newspapers in upstate New York. Since retirement in 2020 he has written three books and is currently adapting his second book "The Last American Newspaper" into a play. He currently lives in Queensbury, N.Y.
"Supporters of democracy must act immediately to bring overwhelming attention to what the Trump administration is attempting – every indication that this is a coup...."
This precise moment in time is when Democrats and others who are concerned about our country's democracy need to unify and act as one to oppose and resist the unlawful Trump administration. Sad to see some commenters here point fingers and scapegoat each other -- that's exactly what Trump wants -- to fragment the resistance.
I don't buy into the blame the democrats. Plenty of blame to spread around including, but not limited to, Fox News channel. How about now? Are any republicans speaking out against Elon Musk and the ransacking of our government? Musk has said he will primary any republican who doesn't implement Trump's agenda. I guess their careers are more important than our country and what the unelected Musk and his 19-24 year old men who are currently dismantling our government. According to FEC filings Musk spent $290 million to buy our government. That should make all of us sick.