Subscribe to the IHARE Blog

Yogi Berra

A Catcher’s Mask Is Not a Coronavirus Mask – Does He Know That?

October 2, 2020
by Peter Feinman
"Then the catcher makes an error, not a bit like Yogi Berra." From a 6th grade poem by the future Coronavirus President (picture by Sam Falk/The New York Times)

A catcher’s mask is not a coronavirus mask. Does our Coronavirus President know that?

When he was in 6th grade he was a catcher. He even wrote a poem including Yogi Berra, who was then a star catcher for the New York Yankees. They were probably his favorite team since they were winners.

He knows what a football helmet is.

He probably knows what a goalie mask is.

He probably knows what a helmet on a knight in shining armor is.

What do all these objects have in common?

What they have in common is that they are designed to protect the wearer. That function is significant. It means that it was imprinted on him at a young age that masks were designed to protect the wearer. They had nothing to do with anyone else. He has known that for over 60 years.

It is important to recognize that the idea is fixed in his mind.

No matter what Fauci says to him about masks, he knows that masks are to protect the wearer.

No matter what Birx says to him about masks, he knows that masks are to protect the wearer.

Try telling a teenager not to text and drive. You can say the words all you want. The teenager can even repeat them back to you. The teenager can even take a test from the Motor Vehicles Bureau and demonstrate knowledge of these words and their meaning. So what. What does mean for the teenager’s behavior?

The same applies to any advice about drugs, drinking and driving, smoking, or any other behavior you don’t want the teenager to do. “OK, Mom. I hear you. OK, Dad, I won’t do it.”
And then guess what happens?

Telling Woodward the words of recognizing the danger of the coronavirus is not the same as understanding them. If you think with your gut and not your brain, the words never sink in. He is still the sixth grader who knows that masks are designed to protect the wearer. Nothing will ever change that.

You think I am nuts, spinning absurd interpretations worthy of a conspiracy website or Fox. Listen to what he actually said to Hannity when he learned that Hope Hicks had the coronavirus. He was surprised.

“She is a hard worker, a lot of masks, she wears masks a lot. But she tested positive.”

How could she test positive? She wore a mask! What do you mean “BUT SHE TESTED POSITIVE”? Wearing a mask doesn’t protect the wearer from getting the virus, it prevents the wearer from spreading the virus. Hope Hicks wore a mask, therefore she should have been protected from the virus. For over 60 years, he has known that masks protect people.

Now consider what he said about Joe Biden during the debate.

“I don’t wear a mask like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Yes, masks protect people, but real men don’t wear masks because real men don’t need to wear masks. Wimps the weak Joe Biden need to wear a mask even when they are 200 feet away from anyone. What a loser. He finally crawls out of his basement and is so terrified of the real world around him that he has to wear a mask. And you think he has the right stuff to be President!

This is how his mind works.

Look at what he did before the debate. He attended a superspreader fundraiser in New Jersey maskless. Why should be wear mask? He didn’t need protection. Hanks to the coverup, we still don’t know the sequence of how he and Hope caught the virus in the first place.

For an adult to wear a mask is to admit weakness. The alpha male wannabee will never admit to being weak. He didn’t retreat to the bunker for security purposes, he was on an inspection tour. And then he dominated Lafayette Square as no other President in American history had ever dominated a space before. And if those governors couldn’t dominate their cities, he would dominate them for them. Never show weakness. Dominate.

Look at how he dominated the two presidential debates in 2016 and 2020. Here is what I wrote about the 2016 debate as a variation of the 1960 debate. This time instead of a radio versus a TV winner, there was a verbal versus a physical winner (Predator in Chief, Our Lady of Perpetual Victimhood: A Presidential Election Retrospective).

During the high school debate while one candidate jabber jabbered, the other candidate was unleashed. He did not remain bound to his lectern. He did not remain a prisoner of the rules of debate. Instead he roamed the arena stalking his prey. A known predator who felt and feels free to grab females whenever and wherever he chooses [and get away with it because he is a celebrity] was now stalking his newest victim. A physically-larger person was circling the smaller victim. What would she do?

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know she was being stalked by a known predator. She knew she was and she knew she had a decision to make. She was now in the arena. She now needed to show if she had the right stuff or not. As she later would write:

Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space. Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly: ‘Back up, you creep, get away from me! I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.’

Perhaps she remembered when a candidate in a Senate debate had violated her space and it had reverberated to her advantage. Not this time.

As she acknowledges, she chose Option A. Now with hindsight she realizes maybe she would have been better off if she had chosen Option B. On radio, no one would have noticed the dilemma she faced. On TV, many people did. Regardless of who won the high school debate, they knew who had won the game of Survivor. When asked in an interview in 1987 whether he would rather be appointed president or run for office, he replied:

“It’s the hunt that I believe I love.”

When he stalked her, he knew what he was doing. When he prowled the arena, he knew what he was doing. When he circled around her, he knew what he was doing.

The same scenario played out earlier this week. This time the opponent was a male plus there was the coronavirus. The option to dominate by physically stalking the foe had been removed. Instead he would dominate through words and bluster. He would bully his opponent into submission by not allowing him the opportunity to get a word in edgewise. And he succeeded. He declared the debate to be the greatest presidential debate in American history. He was the dominant one, not the weak one.

Previously I had predicted two possible moments when he might be forced to live in the real world (The Trump Doctrine versus the Truman (Jim Carrey) Doctrine Update).

1. When he left the White House on January 20, 2021.
2. When he would be investigated under oath with no immunity and the prospect of jail or prison.

No tweets or phone-ins on Hannity would save him then.

It turns out, there may be a third way in which he comes face to face with the real world. It is in a way the flippant President expected. Now that he is in the hospital. Now he is being given experimental medications under special consideration. This is for real. He knows he can’t tweet or bully his way out of this virus. He knows he might die. Will he learn anything if he lives?

Will he change his behavior now that he knows coronavirus that no curve has been rounded and that no miracle has occurred?
Will he decide to pay taxes since they are what pay for him to get the medical care he needs?
Will he stop trying to take away people’s health care and instead promote genuine health care plan?
Will he wear a mask and require everyone else to do so too?
Will he tell the truth about his own health from his mysterious hospital visit last year to his hospital visit this year?
Will he inform his followers that the coronavirus is not a hoax, not the flu, and that people should knock of the masks-are-slavery nonsense and listen to the scientists?
Will he apologize to the country?

Or will he claim that no president in American history ever overcame a greater medical threat than he has and go back to his normal? Unfortunately for him, “back to his normal” won’t work and if he is unable to grow from this experience to become a better person than he was then the country will continue to pay the price.

Donna Reed, Eddie Haskell, and The Donald: The Fifties Live

May 20, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Were The Donald's 50s His "Happy Days"? (https://www.wellesnet.com)

The Fifties are alive and well with The Donald, more so than I had realized. Yes, people have often commented on his preference for the white world of America’s idealized past, but there is more to it than that. I have frequently commented about The Donald being an immature 13 year old or 7th grader in contrast to the level-headed 13 year old Tom Hanks in “Big.” While that is true, I neglected to situate that immature child in time. In other words, he is different from 13 year olds in other time periods; he is a child of the 50s who never grew up.

I first realized his temporal status when he withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement in 2017. At the time he said:

“I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

Put aside the fact that Pittsburgh had voted for his opponent. Instead focus on the city itself. In recent years, it has transformed itself. It is not the iron and steel city it once was. The football team may still be named the Steelers, but steel is not what the city does. Then it occurred to me: The Donald was living in the past. His image of Pittsburgh was based on what the city once had been. It was a manly city where people had manly jobs doing mainly things with iron and coal. His image of the city in the present is based on his image of the city when he was growing up. His Pittsburgh was a city where men were men and women were women and people knew their place.

I should have realized then that legacy of the 50s may have extended beyond that one reference.

Queen Elizabeth

Here again was a passing reference to the childhood of The Donald in the 50s that turns out to be another brick in constructing an understanding the immature child today. When our President was about to meet the Queen, here was the headline in my local paper:

Trump’s Fascination With Royal Family Goes Back to His Mother’s Admiration (NYT, June 4, 2019, print).

According to the article:

One of President Trump’s earliest memories, one he routinely recounts to journalists and biographers, is of watching his mother watch television, so enthralled that she barely moved for hours, on the day in 1953 that Queen Elizabeth was crowned.

He was only 6 years old, but he understood that the gilded spectacle unfolding more than 3,400 miles away inside Westminster Abbey struck a chord in his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, a poor girl who had immigrated from Scotland and who had worked for a time as a housemaid in a grand mansion. He also understood that, for some reason, the same spectacle offended his father.

“I also remember my father that day, pacing around impatiently, ‘For Christ’s sake, Mary,’ he said, ‘enough is enough, turn it off. They’re all a bunch of con artists,’ ” Mr. Trump recalled, years later. “My mother didn’t even look up. They were total opposites in that sense.”

For William Jefferson Clinton, the iconic moment occurred when the 16 year old met President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. That father-figure was an important one in understanding the future President. Similarly one may observe how the Queen and the royal family served as a benchmark for Little Donnee Waney as well…even when he became a crude, rude, 13-year old who had to be sent to military school in the vain hope he would man up.

The Golden Age of NYC Baseball

Typically when referring to the Golden Age in New York City baseball, one is referring to the 1950s. It was the decade when New York teams dominated. The New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers either won the World Series or played in it. Sometimes they play each other in the Series. Sometimes the Giants and the Dodgers played each other to determine who would be the National League champ and go on to the World Series. These series, playoffs, pennant drives, and individual plays became part of baseball lore. It was the time of Mickey, Willie, and the Duke. This era was imprinted on the minds and souls of countless boys who lived through it.

The Donald played baseball. Apparently when he was in 6th grade, he wrote a baseball poem that was published in his elementary school yearbook (per the Washington Post, 06/22/16):

I like to see a baseball hit and the fielder catch it in his mitt…
I like to hear the crowd give cheers, so loud and noisy to my ears.
When the score is 5-5, I feel like I could cry.
And when they get another run, I feel like I could die.
Then the catcher makes an error, not a bit like Yogi Berra.
The game is over and we say tomorrow is another day.

The 6th grade catcher mentions fellow catcher Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees. It is quite reasonable to think that The Donald was a Yankee fan. It is hard to imagine him rooting for those National League teams with all those Negroes playing for them. And besides, the Yankees were the Team of Champions. Recently during the coronavirus crisis, he said:

“I saw baseball is doing something very unusual, I don’t know if I agree with it,” he said. “I’d like to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium. I see they have some ideas for baseball which are very different. I guess I’m a traditionalist. … I think they’d be able to play in Yankee Stadium with obviously smaller crowds and then the crowds would start to build as things get to be a little bit better. I think you’re going to see some big things happen. And again, this is going away.” WFan 4/29/20

Strangely though, most of what you hear about The Donald and baseball is about himself during the early 60s when he was in high school. As expected, virtually nothing that he says about his high school baseball career is true except that he did play for his high school team. That’s no surprise. But what is missing are the baseball stories about the 50s. Did he attend any games with his father? The sixth grader knew about Berra making an error; does he have any memories of any other plays, players, games, or World Series. Perhaps there are real diehard baseball fans who can identify the error Berra made that made such an impression on him. As we all know, it is always about him, so it should not be surprising that he has no stories to tell about others. Imagine The Donald and Billy Crystal trying to swap stories about baseball in the 50s or any other time. When it comes to The Donald and baseball in the 50s it is like there is no there there.

Eddie Haskell

Ken Osmond, the actor who played Eddie Haskell in Leave It to Beaver, just died on May 18, 2020. His character lived on long after the show ran (1957-1963) and was something he never really escaped. Osmond was 14 years old when he started performing as Haskell and about 20 when the show ended. That made him older that The Donald who was 11 when the show began and remains 13. Haskell was not The Donald. Haskell was great character. How could anyone in the show not see through him? But unlike The Donald, he was two-faced. Haskell knew how to act before the parents, the people of authority, and what he could get away with when their backs are turned. By contrast, The Donald was and is one-faced. He thrives on being the naughty boy in public. Think of how much fun he has when he curses in public at one of his professional political wrestling rallies. Think of how much fun he has when gratuitously insulting press reporters (adults, people who can read and know things) at his press conferences. Osmond grew up and became a cop; Little Donnee Waney remains frozen in time.

Donna Reed

So what does Donna Reed mean to The Donald? His image of her was not set by It’s a Wonderful Life Donna Reed but by her TV series The Donna Reed Show (1958-1966). He would have been 12 when it started and would have already graduated high school when it ended. My guess is his watching was during the earlier years. Did he watch the show about the ideal mother and wife with his mother? Did it remind him of his own family? Did he lust for her and want to grab her? All of the above? Some of the above? I don’t know the answers to these questions. Mothers change diapers and raise the children as they did with his own wives…and if they wanted more they were no Donna Reed and the marriage was over.

Did The Donald read the Bobbsey Twins on his own? Did his mother read the stories to him as a child? Why didn’t she read The Hardy Boys or Chip Hilton to him? Today we tend to focus on the experiences of The Donald with his father: the KKK, the racism in the business, the $413 million the father gave the son making him the biggest individual financial loser in American history. What about the mother? Remember how he wanted to reopen the country by Easter so families could celebrate together and go to services just like a Donna Reed family? That sounds more like his mother speaking than his father? If biographers have covered this topic already I apologize for not having read those books. To me at least, there is more to our immature child President than we may realize. Was his mother his Rosebud for an imagined world he never had?