Rich are different when it comes to cleaning toilet bowls
Residents rally around Qby Ethics Board that continues to fight the good fight
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I was doing the obligatory preparatory work whenever you are expecting visitors during the holiday season.
It was then while on my hands and knees and scrubbing the floor around the toilet bowl that I had my epithany: Donald Trump has never cleaned a toilet bowl, or mowed a lawn, or planted a garden or painted his house.
Of this I was absolutely certain.
I think F. Scott Fitzgerald got it right in the The Great Gatsby when talking about the wealthy.
“They are different from you and me,” Fitzgerald wrote.
Although Fitzgerald is of another time, it’s as if he was writing about Donald Trump.
“They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand,” Fitzgerald wrote in his greatest novel. “They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
While swirling my brush around the bowl, this was the question I wanted to ask the leader of the free world: What is the best way to clean a toilet and wondered if his gold toilet had to be cleaned less often?
These basic tasks in our day-to-day lives - doing the laundry, loading the dishwasher, taking out the trash are all things I don’t think our current president has EVER done.
That seems impossible, but yet in this instance feasible.
Surely, he must be the best toilet bowl cleaner, the best at taking out the trash and I’ll bet his insights into loading dishwashers might satisfy many husband-and-wife debates.
Yes, the rich are different than you and me.
Not surprisingly, there was little information about Trump and his experience cleaning toilets, although during his first term he didn’t seem to know that regular scraps of paper should not be flushed. Apparently, repairmen had to be regularly called to unclog his toilets. Apparently, he did not have a plunger handy.
Trump has commented regular about the water flow in showers and toilets and once lamented that people had to flush 10 or 15 times to get a pristine bowl. Maybe, he just needed to stop flushing all that paper.
I tried to picture Donald Trump - actually any of those people in his administration - down on their hands and knees spraying disinfectant and cleaning the handles until they shine.
I couldn’t picture anyone in the Trump administration doing this.
Because the rich and privileged are different than you and me.
Just recently Trump claimed “groceries” were a “beautiful” but “old-fashioned term.”
It made many wonder if President Trump has ever been grocery shopping or did he see that as women’s work. Trump did visit a grocery story as part of a staged campaign appearance in 2024. He once claimed that Americans were required to show a picture ID to buy groceries.
None of us knew what he was talking about.
I wondered if Trump has ever seen a scanner in use or understood how bottle return works.
The rich are different than us, but we we should remember that our ability to be self-sufficient and to think on our feet makes us less dependent.
We are our own men and women.
The rich can’t say that.
Donald Trump can’t say that.
Instead of a debate during the next election, there should be a toilet bowl cleaning competition.
That might tell us what we really need to know.
Ethics update
Catherine Atherden, former Queensbury Town Board member and driving force behind the North Country Light Brigade, was one of five supporters who turned out for the Queensbury Ethics Board during its workshop last week.
She reported that the Ethics Board discussed the changes it’s proposing to the town’s ethics policy. The Ethics Board is fighting for language that would give the policy more teeth, including a provision to make it public when the Town Board refuses to address an ethics violation.
Because of information published in The Front Page, the Town Board lack of action on an ethics complaint has been exposed.
The Ethics Board will meet again on Jan. 22. The original complaint on this issue is more than a year old.
What was better news was the Ethics Board showed no sign of resigning or disbanding. Bravo to continuing to fight the good fight.
More support
It was great to see Indivisible/ADK write in its Dec. 22 newsletter of its support of the Queensbury Ethics Board.
They wrote:
Integrity in Queensbury: The North Country Light Brigade stood at the corner of Haviland and Bay to send a clear message to our Town Board and community: Integrity is not an option.
The Queensbury Ethics Board is currently standing its ground on a critical issue: the appearance of a conflict of interest. The Ethics Board has ruled that Town Board member Tim McNulty serving simultaneously as the chairman of the Warren County Republican Committee creates a conflict that compromise the non-partisan governance of our town.
Why this matters now: The Ethics Board met on Dec. 19 to discuss its very future. There is a real concern that if the Town Board continues to ignore their ruling and block policy update, these dedicated volunteers - who have served fairly for decades - may be forced to resign.
We cannot allow political influence to dismantle the oversight that keeps our local government accountable.
TAKE ACTION: SEND A LETTER OF SUPPORT. Please take a moment today to thank the Ethics Board member for their courage and non-partisan service. Let them know the community stands with them.
More Greenland
The countries of Greenland and Denmark are both angry over the appointment as a special envoy, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, to acquire Greenland.
It’s as if it was a hostile corporate takeover.
After Gov. Landry posted a video on X, Henrik Dahl, a member of the European Parliament from Denmark, posted a reply on X.
“I am pleased that you intend to remain at home in Louisiana. You and your administration have no business in Greenland,” Dahl responded. “Your imperialist fantasies of taking over Greenland have no place in the twenty-first century. We will regard you as an enemy of both the Danish state and the Danish and Greenlandic peoples should you persist in these notions of unilaterally altering the international legal status of sovereign countries.”
Big bust
The Department of Government Efficiency has boasted it made more than 29,000 cuts to the federal government this past year, but federal spending still went up.
Instead of reducing spending by $1 trillion, as Elon Musk predicted, it went up.
According to a New York Times analysis, DOGE repeatedly overestimated the savings on cuts it made while hurting small business and local service providers.
Let’s Talk film
Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Glens Falls
The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Glens Falls continues its film series on Monday, Jan. 12 at 21 Weeks Rd. in Queensbury.
The latest viewing will be of the movie Refuge. It tells the story of Chris Buckley, a former combat veteran and leader in a white Nationalist movement, and Dr. Heval Kelli, a Kurdish Muslim refugee and heart doctor and how they come together to resolve their differences.
Viewing starts at 6:30 p.m. with Don Shuler moderating a discussion afterward.
Trump monument
While giving a speech at Turning Point USA AmericaFest, Fox News host Jesse Watters related to the audience that Trump’s ballroom will be four times larger than the White House.
“Jesse, it’s a monument,” Watters related to the audience what Trump said to him. “I’m building a monument to myself because no one else will.”
Ski conditions
Because of poor snow conditions in Utah, the World Cup aerials competition has been moved to Lake Placid Jan 11-12. A moguls competition has been moved to Waterville Valley in New Hampshire Jan. 15-16.
The Olympics will begin in Italy on Feb. 7.
Acid rain?
The concern about acid rain in the Adirondacks is upon us again with the Trump administration ordering two coal-burning plants in Indiana to remain open past their scheduled closure dates.
The emissions from the coal-burning plants inevitably blow into the Adirondacks and cause acid rain.
A day earlier, the administration announced it was suspending five offshore wind projects along the East Coast. Those projects would have delivered power to some 2.5 million homes.
Concert canceled
Chuck Redd, a jazz musician who has hosted a jazz concert at the Kennedy Center each New Year’s Even for two decades, called off the performance this past week after Donald Trump’s name was added to the Kennedy Center facade.
Trump changed the name despite the fact that only Congress can change the name.
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.
“Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” - Buddha
Ditto for compassion and love.
Choose this path.
Ahhhh! You have discovered my theory of libertarianism. Why are most libertarians white (70-90%) and men (63-68%)? And why does it lean toward misogynistic values?
Answer: because they have never thought of cleaning a toilet nor cleaned up puke or wiped another person's butt clean as a kindness (baby, old person, ill person, doesn't matter). They can't think of paying a person to do these things they take for granted as unpaid labor, or that there is dignity in compassion. May be a bit broad-sweeping, but thanks for the reminder :-)
Will's columns send this home in the most incredible way. And it also harkens back to the guest column on doing the dishes. Love the synergy. Thank you for being thoughtful men.