It's best, 'they say', to get the awful/nasty stuff over first - the much-hallowed benefits of delayed gratification, or something along those lines - so I'm doing that/taking my own oft-self-tendered advice...
And so this'll be somewhat different from - including hopefully much shorter than - my usual offering - for any number of reasons. And not the actual tribute to the memory of John McCain, as originally intended; though in fact written well before, that'll come separately, and a little later...
But c'est la vie, and, perhaps even more pertinently, it'll combine a variety of intended blogposts into one [smorgasbord]. But I suppose such is the prerogative of the blogger. So without further ado...
Any regular reader of my blogs - especially this one, but no, actually, either of 'em - would hardly need reminding that I am far from the world's biggest admirer of the fella presently inhabiting the *White House in ye Awfully Disunited E-States of America... . That being said/on the record...
However rude and uncouth and downright ornery, perverse, cantankerous and downright narcissistic one might - quite legitimately - consider President Donald J Trump to be - yes, let's give the man his due (with knobs on and all the rest) - surely even he is entitled to this one thing: to be and act himself...vis-a-vis whoever he's happened to - be it ever so vociferously, rancorously and even vituperatively - disagree with in times past...for whatever reason...
Surely each one of us, including 'the Donald', is permitted that small privilege at least? And yes, I well realize, people are, even if ever so unconsciously, only too aware of the age-old maxim - which the media has now seized on with absolute glee and delight (and, let's be honest, supercilious schadenfreude, no less), that one ought not to speak ill of the dead.
Really? Surely there are innumerable exceptions to that rule...especially over our generation's lifetime, anyway... But has - did - DJT actually speak ill of John McCain, or did he rather simply choose not to speak at all about him (in the immediate aftermath of his death)? Surely the latter.
And so I will herein maintain in this respect and regard at least, the man has done 'nothin' wrong'!
One can hardly - how could one? - forget being expected (as a sibling never fails to remind me, in excusing the all-too-apparent failings of the up-and-coming generation (of ingrates, quite frankly)) for example, as a tender youth, to invariably hug folk - relatives, to be sure - whom one often found highly disagreeable (and certainly oftentimes relatively unlovable!)...whilst wishing one was somewhere else entirely (on the particular occasion in question)...
And despite being duly indoctrinated - even if implicitly, without a specific word to the effect actually being spoken as such - as one entered youth and early adulthood, as to the 'gaucheness' of speaking one's (true) mind - on all manner of occasions - wasn't it always as a veritable breath of fresh air whenever one would come/stumble upon/across an un-brainwashed/non-community-commandeered kid who would simply tell it as it is (I mean, was)...without any of the airbrushed, doctored up palava, ******fulsome flattery and frankly disingenuity...
In other words, much like Willy Wonka with his bunch (*******fivesome, or rather tensome) of Golden Ticket child winners and their recalcitrant, contrarian, difficult to please and placate - but admittedly also duly browbeaten - parents along for the ride...
Whether it was the chubby checker German boy who disappeared into the chocolate drink (i.e. river) and his irate, implacable mother (and father?), the bossy-boots, straight-speakin' Veruka and her overly dutiful factory manager dad, or the western Mum with her cowboy-lovin', shoot-from-the-(literal)-hip pipsqueak (son) who met his own untimely, karmic fate as he was 'beamed down' into his beloved space-age TV set...-perhaps I've missed one of 'em along the way?...they generally (i.e.parents and children alike) shared this highly undervalued & underrated character quality...
And so the no less open and forthright Willy Wonka himself was on perhaps his biggest roll of the entire film - excepting the bit before the end where he also upbraided Charlie and his uncle for themselves violating the strict, fine-print outlined, terms of the chocolate factory visit - when he, following the equally memorable and delightful (and, moreover, cutting to the very bone) song of the ompah-lompahs, understatedly echoed the decision of the scales which had just decided the fate of Veruka and her now-at-wit's-end dad: yes, they were both real bad eggs.
So is United States President Trump a real bad egg? I'm sure most of the world would doubtless add a big 'Amen!' to such a verdict...even in his relatively short time thus far in the Oval Office. But surely not for simply sharing his (hopefully honest) condolences with Senator McCain's surviving family while sparing us the disingenuous piffle of pretending he himself esteemed the man...
*What unplannable irony the other day, when hearing coverage of one of the seemingly innumerable and interminable Senate/Congressional hearings in Washington D.C. - whether about the proposed new member of the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Brett **Kavanaugh, or the various ongoing committee meetings to establish whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the 2016 American Presidential outcome - that one particular (dissenting Democratic Senator, I believe) had that for his very surname - i.e. Whitehouse.
Though was there not once a staunch anti-pornography campaigner by the selfsame name? Or I am getting all confused between the likes of ***Davina someone-or-other and the ****one-time leftwing powerhouse of the British Labo[u]r Party, *****Mary Whitehouse? Whatever...
**The (u-less) surname also of a special friend of mine, Rachel, who, completely out of the blue, suddenly departed this earthly life back in March 2013...as well as that of a former Catholic priest who read a poem or suchlike at my beloved - very non-Catholic (just for the record) - beloved Grandma 'Billie''s cremation service 21-some years ago now...
****No, that's Barbara Castle, I believe... - and now, as either 'the big Ronnie' (the long-since deceased R Barker) or 'the little Ronnie' (the much more recently departed R Corbett) put it, ....would'ya credit it, that sentence was so long I've since forgotten...?
*****/***Actually, as I've just now discovered (like Justice Kavanaugh's properly spelt name), via ye good 'ole Wikipaedia pages thereabouts, and as succinctly as I can put it: Mary Whitehouse was a [conservative] English social activist; and Davina Whitehouse an English-born NZ actress. So my much-critiqued (by myself!) memory is not really all that bad after all...specifics notwithstanding!
******The real meaning of this oft-used and much-abused term. I.e. not 'very much of' or 'lavish as', as one frequently hears it employed as, but, as my trusty Chambers Concise Dictionary renders it: 'cloying or causing surfeit; nauseous; offensive; rank; disgustingly fawning'. As in obsequious to the nth degree, to put it in plain English.
*******Or rather foursome (eightsome) thereabouts, as Charlie and his uncle were glaring - or rather glorious - exceptions to that rule...in the wonderful first edition of that film, anyway...
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