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Greg Dixon’s Another Kind of Politics is a weekly column that appears on listener.co.nz on Friday mornings. If you enjoy a “serious laugh” - and complaining about politics and politicians - you’ll enjoy reading Greg’s latest grievances.
Who is orange, has an enormous ego, two ex-wives and hides his baldness with an elaborate arrangement that in no way hides his baldness?
The answer is Hulk Hogan. Though any confusion between the Hulkster and Donald-Trump-the-Huckster is forgivable when they appear in the same room, which they did at the Huckster’s bells ’n’ whistles ’n’ racism rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
Obviously, there can be no confusion about the more important matter of which of them could be the President of the United States of America again by this time next week. That would be the one who is the twice impeached, convicted felon, not the one who once claimed to have a 10-inch penis, but later admitted in court he didn’t.
Unfortunately for star spotters, Hogan, who is now so ancient he struggled to perform his trademark shirt-ripping schtick, was about as good as it got celebrity-wise at Trump’s festival of hate, where the tone was set early by a no-name comic describing Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage.
If the presidency was an office awarded to the candidate with the most celebs kissing their ass, Trump’s opponent Kamala Harris would have won the election months ago. At present, her count is some 54 celebrity endorsements, which run the gamut from Taylor Swift to some guy “famous” for playing Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings 25 years ago. Despite his butt’s size, which photographic evidence suggests is enormous, the Huckster really has only the Hulkster, Kid Rock and Steven Seagal kissing his.
Fortunately for Trump, America’s presidency won’t be determined by such outrageous celebrity interference.
As it should be, it will be decided by the number of poorly educated Americans living in swing counties within swing states who can be persuaded to vote for Trump with lies, chicanery, fake news, social media memes from Putin’s troll factories, the repellent Elon Musk and the heart-felt endorsement from our own former prime minister, John Key.
Whether all that will be enough for Trump to win is anybody’s guess: the race is currently neck and neck. But isn’t it always tighter than a fish’s bum just before voting day?
And isn’t it also always true, in this age of media hyperventilation, that the pundits call it the most important election in history? Whether it is or not doesn’t really matter because there will be another one in four years. But fear equals ratings and ratings equal advertising dollars, and frankly, the mainstream media could do with the cash right now.
Of course, the great mystery, watching from this distance which is thankfully thousands of kilometres from the epicentre of America’s collective fever dream, is why anyone of sound mind would vote for an individual who, among a million other outrageous things, ended his first term by inciting the storming of the Capitol because he lost, and is now openly threatening to use the military to deal with “the enemy within” if he succeeds in winning a second four years.
How can it be that those tens of millions of people — equalling nearly half of all voters — want Trump and his dime-store fascism and not the nice black lady who’s besties with Tay-Tay? Are these voters seeing something we’re not?
They likely are, but they are also likely not. America’s political polarisation is now so extreme it’s like Democrats and Republicans are two people watching the same interminable horror film: both are experiencing the same plot with the same characters, but they’re not shocked or scared by the same things, and one of them wants Freddy Krueger to be president.
So as the most important US presidential election in history (apart from the previous 59) approaches like a runaway freight train, Another Kind of Politics would like to offer a little advice to the twice-impeached, convicted felon if he should lose again.
It is this: Don, if the bottom falls out of your world next week, don’t worry. Simply eat a prune and let the world fall out of your (enormous) bottom. Better that than starting a civil war.
Seymour dances on the head of a swastika
And now from the file marked “For idiots’ eyes only”, comes this story of Act leader David Seymour.
We lay our scene at Parliament on the day of a large Mongrel Mob funeral in Lower Hutt. The Prime Minister, that down-to-earth multimillionaire Christopher Luxon, is asked by a journalist, who is attempting to fill a slow news day, whether Nazi symbols, the Nazi salute and the phrase “sieg heil” — apparently used by the Mob — should be banned. The PM, also aware it is a slow news day, says, “We are up for those conversations.”
Cut to Seymour who is also asked whether such Nazi-related carry-on should be banned. He tells The Post: “I hate those symbols and salutes, but I quite like knowing who the idiots in society are, and if they are prepared to self-identify like that, I think it’s actually helpful.”
Hmm. Well, doesn’t the same thing apply to gang patches, which the government has just banned?
No, says he, because that legislation was based on “intimidation”.
Hmm. But isn’t a swastika — a symbol related to a world war, the death of tens of millions of people and neo-Nazis like the scumbag who murdered 51 people in Christchurch — rather intimidating, and wouldn’t Seymour be, you know, a bit intimidated by a person waving a swastika about?
Apparently not. “If I saw one of those in New Zealand,” says he, “I would think, ‘What an idiot.’”
Might it take one to know one?
Political Quiz of the Week
What is King Charles quietly muttering to Luxon in this picture?
A/ Bloody tourist.
B/ Hallensteins? Never heard of them.
C/ I’d be awfully grateful if you took some wine and f***ed off.
D/ Funnily enough, I named my tumour Chris.
