Trump the Heel

A good way to cope with our crazy world is just admit that you have very little control over anything. Also helpful is thinking that everything is scripted and staged, like pro wrestling.

Did Donald Trump succeed in his hostile takeover of the Republican Party? Well, that's like asking if Trump really conducted a hostile takeover of Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment.

Yes and no. Trump's story arc is not yet complete.

Trump now plays the role of the heel, the one who takes cheap shots and hits below the belt. It's not "dignified," and it's hard to defend him sometimes. Especially when he calls Mika Brzezinski "Low IQ."

He also called her, crazy, and said that she was, bleeding from a face-lift.

Trump has insulted Mika's honor, called her stupid, and implied that Joe Scarborough's woman is a shop-worn kook who needed a new face.

This is a real alpha move by Trump. This is Trump asking, Who Bitch Is This?

He's responding to Mika's constant mocking, like this morning's teensy hands swipe, which she delivered with a squeaky voice.

Trump responded by saying to Joe, hey, control your woman or I will perform a dominance display on your ass.

I don't know that Scarborough has any room to maneuver here. He can't threaten the President, or challenge him to a duel. So how does he avenge the slight to Mika's honor?

Chivalrous displays from elsewhere in the media will demonstrate that a woman's honor is worthy of defending, but what will Joe do?

We've already seen that Melania is willing to defend her husband. She said that, when her husband gets attacked, he will punch back 10 times harder.

What I wouldn't give to see Melania and Mika brawl in real life, that is, in a carefully scripted and staged WWE event.

Wonder Woman

I'm not going to lie: I'm excited to see Wonder Woman. I watched the trailer today, and it made me feel something powerful and I'm thinking through what that something is.

First, note that the feminist reaction to this movie is not universally positive. Feminists closed ranks around Ghostbusters more monolithically than for Wonder Woman. First, there was an uproar because Diana doesn't have armpit hair. It's not enough for feminism's lesbian wing that Diana was raised among a group of Amazon warriors, she's got to have pit hair, too.

There is a boycott in Lebanon because Gal Gadot, who was born in Israel, is a Zionist. The little neo-marxists who claim feminism also by and large hate Israel.

The anti-Wonder Woman zeitgeist seems to be coalescing around the viewpoint of Guardian reviewer Steve Rose, who complained that Wonder Woman doesn't break the glass ceiling. She's a "weaponized Smurfette" according to Rose, and the movie is destined only to be a "camp classic."

Yeah, we'll see. I predict that we will see mothers and fathers taking their daughters and sons to see this movie, because there is something universal about it.

That archetype, besides the well-tread female superhero myth embodied by Buffy and Xena, is that of a crusader / nurturer. If you aren't with her, then you are against her, and her ultimate duty is protective and maternal.

There seems to be a great hunger for embodiment of this archetype right now. In spite of what feminists like Steve Rose would have you believe, the children and grown-up children who go to the movies aren't interested in a movie about a woman who works eighty hours a week to become partner.

They want to imagine a woman who will go to war to protect them.

I don't have a problem with a movie about women who break the glass ceiling. It's just that that is a new archetype that is being forced upon us. If you want to make a movie about that, I'm sure it will appeal to some people. It may even become universal some day. Probably not though.