At this writing, spring has sprung, April showers are about to bring May flowers.
And May flowers are about to bring Pilgrims.
Sorry. Turns out there's more than one type of "gag" reflex.
I mention the time of year here only to underscore the paradox of the time of year...versus the mood in which I seem to find myself.
As opposed to following the timeless tenets of Tennyson, the awwww-esque observation that "in the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love", the atmosphere in this medulla is more evocative of a season to come a little later.
The time when the beautiful buds that are currently budding will have lived out their loveliness, turned from green to yellow to orange and are fluttering, if not fully fluttered, signaling the coming end of the year which, at this writing, we just got used to writing on our checks.
Wow. Where does the time go? Especially when I'm talking autumn and, at the moment, we're only a week or so past the first official day of spring.
Again, this is all, and only, for the purpose of providing paradox.
It's April....but, props to Mr. Billy Joel, I'm in a November state of mind.
Tell you why before you can say "wow, where does the time go?"
Jeanine Pirro is a joke.
Or, to be more accurate, if not more charitable, the persona that Fox News broadcasts named Jeanine Pirro is a joke.
Wiki dryly offers that "Jeanine Ferris Pirro is an American television host, author, conspiracy theorist and a former judge, prosecutor, and politician from New York. Pirro is the host of Fox News Channel's Justice with Judge Jeanine. She was a frequent contributor to NBC News, including frequent appearances on The Today Show."
I always enjoy those little nuggets of nutty hidden in plain sight inside the sugary goodness of these little bios. In this case, the reference to her checkered past days as a "frequent contributor" to NBC News and The Today Show.
From such sixty plus years old American iconics as the National Broadcasting Company and the Today Show to the having a pretty obnoxious adolescence of Fox News, can't seem to avoid the inevitability of phrases running through my head including, but not limited to, "going over to the dark side".
And, don't get me wrong, at some levels, there's nothing wrong with her choosing the dark side as the shop to hang her shingle.
First, if nobody went over, this side would make Times Square on New Year's Eve look like a little get together with a few close friends in terms of room to breathe and crowd control. Kind of like that silliness about staying out of the left lane and keeping to the right.
I mean, come on, everybody in the right lane? We'd never get anywhere fast. Or soon. Or ever.
Congress suddenly comes front and center in the thought process. But, digressing, I am.
Pirro's full bio is colorful, captivating and "the stuff that dreams are made of", if the dream in question happens to be coming up with a character that would draw millions of potential product consumers, code named "viewers", to their flat screens.
And, in the interest of transparency, I don't know Pirro personally, have never met Pirro, wouldn't know Pirro if she showed up on my doorstep or, the way my luck tends to run, ended up sitting behind me at a Barbra Streisand concert singing along with every single word of every single song in a voice that can only be correctly labeled "Noo Yawwk".
Which, come to think of it, makes the word "character" fall a little short of accurate when describing Pirro. At least the Pirro that presents on America's News Channel.
That Pirro, I'm a thinkin', would more correctly be categorized as a caricature.
"...a picture, description, or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic or grotesque effect....".
Or both.
Whether she looks, talks and acts the way she does because that's who she really is or whether she looks, talks and acts the way she does to create a comic or grotesque effect (read: grab a spotlight and refuse to let it go, hanging on like grim death), Jeanine Pirro is the kind of public figure that figures prominently in the nightly prayers of comedy writers from coast to coast.
Thanking God each and every night, for the punchlines, skits, sketches and segments that pretty much write themselves.
Courtesy of Judge Jeanine.
That's SNL cast member Cecily Strong more than doing the "Judge" justice.
Saturday Night Live, of course, while being the lightning rod for a lot of the wrath of the Right (read:self Right-eous) these days, merely one of the many television shows, radio shows, even movies that are feeding off the motherlode of material provided by the caricatures offered up by the characters who inhabit the story line of the daily comedy/satire/farce/surreal series that has been dazzling the democracy for two high ratings tsunami soaked years now.
Trump Nation.
And, not just a little ironically, Trump Nation, let's call it TN, like its counterpart SNL, is a fertile field of performers whose satirical skills are matched only by their seemingly effortless presentations of that satire.
Almost as if TN was, like, the mirror image of SNL. Or....the dark side of the mirror.
Depending entirely, of course, on which side of that mirror is one's real and which side is the reflection.
But that's an existential for another examination.
Let's skip that surreal and simply kick back for a few laughs.
Live, from Washington DC, it's Trump Nation.
With...
Kellyanne Conway.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
Mike Pence.
Mick Mulvaney.
Featuring.....
Sean Hannity.
Jeanine Pirro.
Musical guests.....Jared and Ivanka.....
And starring.......
Yeah, well, you get the idea.
For an "administration" that tantrums and whines loudly, frequently and "bigly" about how mean they are treated by late night comedy shows, the irony is jam the needle in the meter powerful, that said administration is, let's just call it what it is, a twenty four/seven comedy show in a league by itself.
Staffed from floor to ceiling with a cast of characters that make SNL's caricatures of them seem almost like putting chocolate sprinkles...on top of chocolate sprinkles.
Keeping in mind, meanwhile, that there is something rock solid true about caricatures.
Author Joseph Conrad said it succinctly.
"...a caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of truth."
The ratio of truth to joke in every one of the caricatures that is the cast of Trump Nation is practically incalculable.
But, Lord knows, just like your, or mine, favorite cartoon characters, there is a measure of pleasure in the laughs generated. Even if we're talking Snidely Whiplash and not Dudley Do-Right.
Bluto and not Popeye.
The Joker...and not Batman.
Which brings us back around to the feeling of November that I am experiencing as I watch and listen to the dark comedy yammer babble of the caricature of "Judge" Jeanine Pirro while living and enjoying these first few days of spring, not autumn.
A feeling of...gratitude, thankfulness.....thanksgiving.
For the knowledge that Pirro and Conway and Sanders and all the wacky doo cast members of the record breaking ratings hit, Trump Nation are, at the end of the day, absolutely nothing more than caricatures of actual public servants.
Zany, bizarre, ludicrous, absurd, dippy, daft. comical, clownish cartoon characters.
And I couldn't be more thankful than I am for that.
Just imagine, for a moment, what kind of hopelessness you and I and any and all reasonable, and reasonably intelligent, Americans would be feeling......
...if these silly screwballs could be taken seriously.....
...for a single.......scary......second.
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