Several years ago there was a very funny movie about a Broadway show called “Springtime for Hitler.” The accountant for a producer figured out that if someone could develop a Broadway show guaranteed to fail, they would actually make more money than for a successful show. The decision was to develop a Broadway show guaranteed to be a major flop. They hired the worst possible screen writer to create an idiotic script. They retained the most pathetic available director and selected the most incompetent out of control actors available. At first the audience reacts with outrage, as expected, but then someone starts to laugh. The worse the show gets, the more people laugh and the more popular it becomes. It ends up becoming an enormous hit, which creates huge problems for the producers who end up going to jail for fraudulent financing.
Sometimes it appears as though the 2016 Presidential race is a spinoff of Springtime for Hitler. How else could anyone explain the following cast of characters other than as a silly plot designed by a maniacal producer determined to create a flop?
The leading contender is Hillary Clinton; an aging has been who never was. Sometimes it is hard to believe she is a real person. This is a feminist who only achieved fame and power by marrying a serial philanderer. She has a life long history of telling outrageous lies so transparently false that it is sometimes hard to restrain the giggle factor. Every time anyone was stupid enough to follower her guidance the result was unmitigated and catastrophic failure, from Hillary Care to Libya. The majority of people in her own party don’t consider her trustworthy and there is a significant chance she will be indicted for gross negligence with regard to protecting classified information. That of course, has no impact on the many pundits who consider her to be the odds on favorite and by far the person best qualified to be the next President of the United States.
Her opponent is Bernie Sanders, a wild-haired 74 year old socialist who isn’t technically a Democrat. He is drawing enormous crowd by resurrecting silly socialist propaganda proposing policies that have failed all over the world. No serious person, in either party, believes there is any chance he can deliver 10% of what he promises because there isn’t close to enough money. No one living person can remember a single thing Bernie Sanders has done that could remotely be classified as an accomplishment.
The leading Republican contender is an enormously wealthy business man famous for flaunting his life style of the rich and famous. He is on his third trophy wife. He has bankrupted four companies leaving investors drowning in red ink while he flies around to his luxury resorts on his enormous private jet. He is getting hours of free media coverage primarily by sneering into the camera with his smug red-faced bulldog expression while shouting insults that have put him in contention for the Guinness world record for insulting the most people in the shortest possible period of time. The more outrageous the insult and the more childish his behavior the higher he rises in the polls. Incredibly one of the richest men in the world has somehow convinced the blue collar workers he is famous for exploiting that he is on their side.
If you were a producer looking for the most ridiculous script and the worst possible cast of characters performing in a play managed by the most incompetent possible director it would be difficult to do a better job at depicting insanity than what we are seeing in real life during this election cycle. I sometimes keep waiting for the producer, or someone to burst onto the stage asking people if they are really buying this load of crap. But, in real life, as in the movie, that would probably just make each of them even more popular.
The problem here is that if we are stupid enough to elect any of these clowns the joke will be on us.
TDM