From Wikipeia on Jared Kushner
"  He graduated from the Frisch School, a coed yeshiva high school, in 1999. According to aHspokeswoman for Kushner Companies, he was an honors student and a member of the debate, hockey, and basketball teams.[11] Former school officials described him as a less than stellar student.[12] In 1998 Charles pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University.[13]
Kushner matriculated at Harvard College in 1999.
"
​

​​ZOMBIE NIGHTS ARE HERE AGAIN
But this time it’s Zombie  (K)NIGHTS!
 
Please stop calling me Dumbo, as the Zombie does all the time.  I am not that dumb, really!,  and this story will prove it.  But I sure was anxious. I don’t know why I promised I would go off with Zombie on a “working vacation” next weekend to write an article showing that Donald Trump is a demagogue and not a populist.  How had I ever made such a stupid promise? “Working vacation,” my foot!  That was not what Zombie had in mind.   And I certainly don’t know why I invested my entire fortune, over $16, in a Las Vegas on-line betting site, wagering on the same proposition.  The odds were great, but it made me so anxious that I have not been able to write anything at all,  not even skits for SNL.
 
But here is the good news:   When the stress got intolerable, I found a brilliant solution, if I may say so myself with all due modesty -- escapism. I decided to deal with that anxiety by talking to someone smart, witty and articulate, just for fun, over a few beers. .  Good plan, eh?
 The trouble was, of course, that no living person who is smart, witty or articulate wants to have anything to do with the likes of me.  Was I stymied? No way! I dusted off my notes from the Necromancy courses I had taken a decade ago when I was an undergraduate at UC Santa Barbara, thinking I could conjure up– you guessed it! – Aristophanes, one really smart, witty and articulate dude! Yes, I would relieve my anxiety by shooting the breeze with him over a few beers. After all, what’s a major in Necromantic Studies for, if not for intelligent conversation?
 
No luck. I guess my note taking was impeded by all those glorious, well-tanned surfer bodies sitting around me in the Necromancy classes.  I might as well have majored in Literary Theory , where the faculty kept explaining that you can never recover the actual presence of the  author, just “the socio-economo- power relationships that constitute the illusion of individual identity in a mass-consumer capitalist society.” Discouraged after several efforts to conjure up the wise old   guy,  I dozed off on my much-used  couch.
Note: please. DO NOT THINK I DREAMED THE NEXT OART OF THE STORY.  THAT IS SOPHOMORE STUFF. I WAS TELEPORTED – MUCH BETTRER, AS ANY SCI-FI FAN KNOWS/
That is when the amazing thing happened.  I was teleported back to Athens  where a performance in the Theater of  Dionysus was about to take place! And it would not be one of those modern “adaptations. ” You know -- where the translation is in modern slang, the costuming is all blue jeans and b lack T shirts, and where dirty jokes and obscene actions are added to the sacred ancient script. These productions are full of cheap shots at  today’s national leaders, mostly Republicans, like me.  These modern-dress productions usually end up runnin the show into the audience, in some big Conga line – a sure sign of their aesthetic bankruptcy.
No sir, this was not going to be one of those disgraceful productions This would be the real thing, authentic, sober, “the chastening of the politic  by a chaste Muse,” as I once read in a book about th Greeks by Professor What-was-her-name?  Yup – I was at the original production of Aristophanes’ Hippies. in 424 BC, (plus or minus  50), if my memory serves me right. Thinking back on  all those earlier blog postings, “Zombie Night, I thought of a really cool nulti-lingual pun. The Hippies could be valled Zombie Knights.  Get it? (Please, don’t e put off by this learbed and cleveer pun; scroll down; don’t miss the earlier episodes of Zombie Nights.)  .
It was starting. Two establishment politicians of ancient times, surely Nicias and the general Demosthenes, although I must admit they looked very much like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, were...well...  .  They understandably wanted to release the tension and disappointment that had built up when they were displaced by a vulgar new comer. They were doing this in a way that a viewer accustomed to  our sex-crazed, Hollywood entertainment world might think was the stroking of their huge comic phalluses.  I am sure there is some other, more authentic explanation of this scene.
Aftrer a while on came the chorus of hippies pretending to be cavalry. They has no horses but went cantering about in a manner that evoked Monty Python. We were all waiting for, the two main characters, the Weenie Man, and someone said to have orange hair, thug-like movements, and wimpy gestures.  I am sure the program notes were correct in saying this was the politician Cleon, and that any resemblance between him and our esteemed forty fifth president of the US of A was purely an anachronism.
But who was going to play the Weenie Man, the salesman who outdid Trump, I mean Cleon, in noise, vulgarity and salesmanship? Me! Yes, me, Dumbo! I was totally absorbed in the comedy when a sharp voice announced “Two minutes till you’re on stage. Get that mask and those buskins on. Don’t forget your phallus!.”   
“Hey,” I thought, “this could be an authentic experience. of an ient drama. What an opportunity!” OK, I’ll do it, but I might as well have some fun, you know, just a few ad libs.  So even before I came on stage I cracked the audience up. Nothing inauthentic, of course. . Even before my entrance on stage I had the audience cracked up, shouting “Wee--nies, Wee-nies. Big hot we-enies.. Get your weenie here... Best weenies in town. Eat more weenies.” Or words to that effect.
Once on stage, I had to fake my lines, answering  the guy who looked just like Mitch McConnell as he tried to  recruit  me to replace the guy who looked just  like our esteemed 45th president, Donald J.  Trump, but wasn’t, of course, because this was an authentic production of a ancient play. .
So I tried to explain to the McConnell –look-alike that I couldn’t possibly be the rival of the Trump d’oeil, because I was too dumb and could only barely read or write.
That’s when it happened,  the great moment, the ecstasy, the rush of pure joy.  I mean:  The McConnell figure said,
That is the only thing that can stand in your way, that you barely  know how to read. A demagogue mustn’t  be an educated man, and not an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a crook. (lines 189 ff.)
 
You heard it, right?  The word! He said it. – not populist, no way! He said demagogue. For the first time in recorded history. And I was right there on stage, and it took my breath away I was present at the creation, the Big Bang, the moment when demagogy got its name.
Ohh- ... I was so happy I burst out singing! “Oh joy, o rapture unforeseen, the clouded sky is now serene.” The audience applauded.
A few minutes later, it happened again. The McConnell-look-alike said to me,
You possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, cross-grained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing.  (216 ff.)
“Demagogue,” he said it again! I was so happy I burst out singing again, “Oh, happy days are here again/ the skies above are clear again./ Happy days are here again!” The audience loved it, They applauded. Some even cried. A new career opened up.  A star was being born- moi!
 
 
When the Trump-stand-in came on stage everyone realized that word – demagogue, not populist­ – fit him  like a glove. The guy was a demagogue pure and simple.
 
Now I would have the perfect case for using the qword demagogue, not that namby-pamby populist. I’d win my bet.   Zombie and I  --what the hell! – could spend our time together in  better ways than writing a boring article arguing about political terminology.
From there on acting in this play was a piece of cake. It was easy to fake my lines.  Whenever the Cleon guy said something more outrageous, I said something even more outrageous,. If he made a threat, I threatened him right back,  big league! And all the time I was backed up by those Hippies, on their make-believe horses.  Finally,  old man Electorate had got rid of the Trump-look-alike and hooked up with – oh my gosh, she looked a bit like Zombie! Could it be? I’ll have to wait until Friday night to find out.
At this point we threw away the  script of the  play and ran the show into the aisles in a giant Conga line. Very authentic.
 
--
Free Advice: If you want to know what a demagogue is. or how to get rid of one,  read the  play, or better still, produce it! And have some authentic fun. Join  the Conga line: 1-2-3 la Conga! 1-2-3 la Conga... 1,2,3 ... Ole!  
 

Dear Friend,
 
You write all the way from Australia asking about news reports concerning te firing of F.B.I.  director James B. Comey.  The liberal media are full of such stories. That in itself shoyld make you wary.
Here are some alternative facts to put the matter in perspective: President Trump did not fire Jaems Comey. How could he? There is no James Comey, not any more, not even back then.  In fact, there is no F.B.I. It hasn’t existed since the glory days of J. Edgar Hoover.
All these stories are fake news made up by Democrats to draw attention away from their humiliating election defeat last November.
In fact, we can now go one step further. Despite all the reports in the liberal media there is no Donald J. Trump. Fake news again! There is simply a profound moral vacuum hopping like a tornado from the Florida coast, to Washington to New York.  It sucks into itself the concerns, worries, fears, anxieties and yearnings of the American people, fragments them, , extracts power from them and disgorges them as slogans, clichés, and temper tantrums. That’s a there is to it.
Rest assured.
Bob
​
 
May 2017

 
       Above: Pallas Atena and a Commencement Speaker
--
​
 
“Remember: even if you win the rat race, you will still be a rat.”
Helpful Hints:

1. Plagiarize. It is part of a grand tradition and sets a good example for the graduates.
2. If you sit down after the word “ . . . be a rat,” they will all applaud.

3. If you continue speaking, they will all fall asleep.
4. After the ceremony suggest to the adulating crowd of faculty and administrators that this should have been said four years earlier, during orientation week, and again, one way or another, in every course taken by every student.
 
 

Dumbo’s Law
                              Wherein our hero finds a way to hit  it big both financially and intellectually.
 
I woke up in the middle of the nighjt and shouted  EUREKA!!!! (which  is short hand for “I am now in th present state that results from a previous moment of finding,” as I had learned in my beginning  Necromancy course.  Perfect! I shouted EUREKA again real loud, so the grumpy people in the adjoining garret would not complain that they had missed this historic moment and the opportunity to rejoice with me in a discovery that could change my life, solve my financial problems, and  make America great again.
Here’s the scoop. I had found the bright side of the dismal fact reported in the last blog entry  that all the smart people, and some of the not-so-smart ones, like me, thought that Tr*mp was a populist nota demagogue.  I realized in my dreams that the odds-makers in Las Vegas were probably offering high odds on this very matter.  If so, all I had to do was put some money on the line and prove that demagogue was the right word.  And Zombie would help me with that!
I stumbled on the pile of dirty laundry on my way to the second-hand  IBM CPU that my parents had given me fifteen years ago when I was applying to college. Slow, but a real workhorse. Once it came up I  wouldcheck to see what odds Las Vegas was offering.
 
While the CPU was booting up I turned my attention to another part of my new business plan – capital formation, maybe through an IPO or if necessary a bank robbery.  Then in another dazzling insight I realized the funds might be nearer to hand, so  started groping in the cracks and  crevices of the old sofa that had served me so well on so many occasions.  I was disappointed at first, finding only half a granola bar, a meaningless telephone number scribb;ed on the bac of a movie ticket, a moth-eaten ski cap, and a few pennies, dimes and two quarters. But then, way down deep I felt a lump, skillfully extricated it and found –yes! – the wallet I had lost a year and a half ago.  I opened it as fast as I could and found two fives and six one dollar bills.  Two mysteries solved – The wallet must have slipped out when I was making our on the couch  - the only such time in recorded history.  And the mystery of capital formation was solved as well. The odds, I now saw on the screen, were 25 to 1.  All I had to do was prove Trr*mp was a demagogue and I woud have enough to buy an iPad. That would increase my productivity  as a soon-to-be-acclaimed writer and set me on the path to fame and fortune.
I generalized this insight into a  law  that may be applied both to financial and to intellectual matters. With all due modesty  named it after myself: Dumbo’s Law: Always go for he high odds; what have you got to lose?
You ask why go for the long odds rather than playing it safe? Not just because the pay off is bigger , but because you get at the really interesting questions that way. Any dumbo knows that!  
Now all I have to do is find an elegant and convincing proof that Tr*mp is not a populist. He is a demagogue. I’ll get right to work. The laundry can wait.
 
 
 
 
 ]
 
 
May 2017