Ill-Wind and the Gust

I can think of a dozen reasons, off the top of my head, why to despise and fear that man in the oval room. But what is on the top of His head is the least loathsome thing about him. Yet a funny thing happened, last week, on his way to the gentle breezes of Mar-a-Lago. A mischievous gust of wind swept away his cover-up to reveal his bald-face lies.

My mother, in her infinite wisdom, could read the mysteries of air. She could tell the ill-wind that caused my whooping cough, mumps and even scarlet fever from that benevolent, reinvigorating fresh air which swept away the forces of malevolence.

That revelatory blast of air which parted Donald’s ample hair, like the red sea, has stirred a national debate whether he has had scalp reduction surgery, transplant or a world-class wig. If the former one wonders if something else was reduced in the procedure. No president has worn a wig since James Monroe and the three preceding him. I don’t subscribe to any of the above choices. I think he is wearing his own bumper crop which has been encouraged to grow, willy-nilly, like unfettered capitalism.

The Greeks had a reverence for the winds. Not just any old wind. They named them. A north wind was attributed to Boreas and the west wind to Zephyrus. Favorable flow moved their ships; still air kept them in port which got cursed Agamemnon in so much trouble.

So it was that this zephyr, in one fell swoop, came along to accomplish, metaphorically, what Robert Mueller has been laboring over since last June. It blew away his other-worldly, highly coiffed, nearly-orange, daily-mowed comb-over. As if we didn’t already know it, the gust displayed his vanity and ruffled his peacock crown. It was as if Hitler’s fake mustache had blown away. Of course there is nothing wrong with bald.

We have just one bald president and he ran and won twice against his bald opponent. No one could say Ike’s victory was by a hair. Adlai Stevenson was smeared as being an egg-head but, somehow, Dwight Eisenhower’s head was more round than oval. And out oat head came his cautionary farewell speech warning against abuses by the Military–Industrial Complex. Adlai couldn’t have said it better. But I’ll never forget his quip upon an ordination by Norman Vincent Peale when he said, I find the apostle Peale appalling but the apostle Paul appealing.

Never could such quickness of mind be attributed to Donald. Our current White House resident, with his lame incoherence, seems to have found the perfect balance between arrogance, ignorance and malice. No matter the crop on top, his amber waves of grain are insufficient to distract us from the pseudo-majesty which lies beneath. Would that a godly gust from Olympus grant us a make-over or just whisk him and his miasma away.