Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump

 

An old friend of mine worked at one of the Trump buildings, back when gullible Americans were fawning over Trump’s reality tv show. How was it? He describes Trump’s head chef taunting him with racist jokes, and Matthew Calimari (Trump’s gigantic head of security turned head of operations) intimidating everyone. Intimidating? Calimaria (a rather large man, btw) would turn to employee #1 and say, “You gonna train him?” The lackey would say, “Mister Calimari, you know I always give you my best.” The big man would turn to lackey #2 and say, “What’re you gonna do?” The big man, with his big moustache, would get the same answer, then call you to his office to make you wait. Regardless of what you were there for, he’d make you wait as a matter of policy. Now I have to wonder, why is everyone in the Trump corporation such an asshole? Why are they always looking for ways to make themselves feel powerful? Does Donald Trump hire bullies? I wonder how he kept his machine going. Why did bans keep lending him money? Why did the TV networks shower him with attention? The author, Trump’s niece, makes that clear in the prologue: How did Donald Trump get away with it for so long?

Mary Trump holds nothing back in her disdain for her family. She describes her grandfather, Fred Trump Sr, as an abusive racist and a male chauvinist, and her grandmother, a poor Scottish immigrant, as selfish and classist. But she also makes her grandmother look weak and incompetent. Did her grandfather, an abusive domineering man, find himself attracted to Mrs. Trump’s fragility? Then there’s her father, Fred Trump Jr, who she describes as weak and incompetent as well. After college, he worked for his father in property management, but found that it didn’t suit him. He joined the Air National Guard, became a pilot for TWA, and found himself rebelling against his father. Pilots were held in high regard in the 1960’s, but Trump Sr. considered them nothing more than bus drivers. You would think that this man would laugh off his father’s criticism, but he didn’t. Fred Trump Jr. really took it to heart, even worse when his younger brother Donald was sent to deliver the message from their father. Soon Fred Jr.’s drinking worsened, he lost his TWA job, fell back in with his father, and was treated like dirt for the rest of his life.

You would think Fred Jr.’s wife would say, “Screw your father, stick with flying,” but the man was so weak that he couldn’t resist the pull of his father’s black hole. For the rest of his life, it would be low-level positions, managing his father’s low-quality buildings in Queens, living in the building’s worst apartments, dying broken and alone. Mary Trump speculates that her grandfather, in typically hateful Trump fashion, kept her father from getting loans to buy a home or start a business. Whether or not it’s true, it seems as though Fred Sr. enjoyed watching his son fail. Why would he trash his son’s career as a pilot, when the country’s elite (which Fred Sr. fancied himself a part of) considered it a top-dog life? Why would he insist on his son returning to the family business, if all he would let his son do was be a building superintendent? Perhaps Fred Sr. needed a weak son to abuse so that he could feel powerful?

There is a possible reason for the failure of Fred Jr’s career, not mentioned in the book. Fred Jr. was an Air National Guard pilot, who’d never flown in combat, or even been in the service full-time, so he would’ve been very low on the pilot totem pole. The airlines recruited from the Air Force and Navy first, then the Air National Guard, then the flying school. Did he feel disrespected by his fellow pilots, most of whom had probably flown in the Korean War? Was he relegated to local flights, while the military veterans flew across the Atlantic? There’s a scene in the story where Donald and Robert Trump spend the weekend at their brother’s house, and they disrespect not only their older brother, but his wife too. Why was it tolerated? Why couldn’t Fred Jr. just say, “Are you both nuts? Are you out of your minds?” Something was clearly wrong with this man.

Fortunately, Mary Trump had a decent life. She was at boarding school when her father died and hadn’t seen him much in those years. She disregarded her grandfather, who didn’t want her going to college. She had a good career as a psychologist, distanced herself from her uncle, and fought with him over her grandfather’s will.

After reading this book, I noticed something about Trump that I find disturbing. America’s great millionaires all had interesting hobbies, like JP Morgan’s book collecting, and Nelson Rockefeller’s fascination with art, among others. Trump, however, does nothing with his leisure time besides play golf and watch TV. Then there’s philanthropy: all of the great millionaires – Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Pratt, Whitney, Guggenheim, Cooper, and Hewett – built colleges and museums. But what did Trump endow? Nothing!

When interviewed about this book, her aunt Elizabeth reminisced about what a bad girl Mary Trump was, showing up to her grandfather’s Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in jeans and a sweater. Was Donald Trump’s niece, cut off from the family circle, the only one tough enough to say no? Was she the only one who had the guts to look her grandfather in the eye and say no to him? It reminds me of the story of the Finnish prime minister, who had lunch with Hitler, and knowing Hitler detested smoking, lit a cigarette in Hitler’s presence. It was an open disregard for a domineering bully, and in similar fashion, Mary Trump knew exactly what little, trivial things, insignificant as they may seem, would piss off a selfish man. I bet nobody forgave her.

Alabama v. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Criminal Trial That Launched the Civil Rights Movement

    In the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, a Black American defendant, obviously innocent, kills his own defense with five words: I felt sorry for her. That’s all it takes for him to make the all-White jury hate him, he just has to act superior to a White person and he’s crossing the line. All it takes is for him to behave as though he’s better off than a White woman, and he’s seen as “uppity,” and racist Whites need no greater excuse to convict him (or worse) than him being uppity. In the Deep South of old, a Black man could risk his life just by opening his mouth. But that’s where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. crossed the line, and once he crossed that line, the USA wasn’t going back.

    Fred Gray was one of the few Black lawyers in 1950’s Alabama and he was part of Dr. King’s defense. One thing I learned from this book, not mentioned in history class, is that the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-1956 was not the first of its kind. There was an earlier bus boycott in New Orleans, which resulted in changing of the stops along the route. Another boycott in Tuskegee resulted in a lawsuit: the attorney general sued to force Black Americans to buy from White-owned stores! The judge said no, Black citizens had the right to trade – or not – with whomever they wanted. In this case, Gray describes the judge as courageous, but that raises questions. Why would a judge be courageous for ruling with his conscience? Why would it be courageous for a judge to rule based on commerce clauses? The dangers of taking a Black man’s side are a major part of this story.

    It seems (at least according to this book) that Southern racists had a need for segregation, and a need to keep Black Americans as second-class citizens, and that need was power. Having someone beneath you in status can make you feel very powerful. Even the poorest White persons could feel good knowing that a Black family had to defer to them. A poor White girl, starving and clothes rags, could feel like a queen when a Black man (regardless of age) had to step aside for her and address her as “miss.”

    Calling Dr. King’s bus boycott “illegal” was really a way of saying, “How dare he speak!” In a way it was like Olver Twist asking for more slop: by voicing dissatisfaction, Oliver was denying the warden’s sense of benevolence. The author quotes White leaders who described the Black southern living standard as “equal to our own,” and given how Black school were crumbling, and few Black Americans could get loans from banks, such a view seems highly distorted. Was the Southern racist attitude a deliberate construct, or were Southern Whites deluding themselves? The authors show how the South was becoming increasingly isolated, thanks to the Jim Crow policies. For example, when insurance companies cancelled the policies for cars in the boycott carpool, Lloyd’s of London stepped in to insure the cars. These foreign banks were deliberately interfering with the Southern racist efforts, and it showed them that the world was offering no recognition of segregation.

   Some historians believe that the 1960’s, with all the anti-authority rhetoric and rebellion, began with the Civil Rights movement. Aside from industrial strikes, there had never been a mass of people disobeying authority, and certainly not to the extent that they’d put themselves in danger. But the trial of Dr. King, for what the city of Montgomery called an “illegal” boycott, had to have been a major catalyst. When Dr. King was not sent to prison, and released to continue his effort, it sent a message to the South that Jim Crow could be weakened.

Without Jim Crow, the South would have to reconsider the norms and mores.

Paul Joins the Scouts

    I don’t often see a graphic memoir about happy families. After reading the well-known selections -Maus, The Arab of the Future, Persepolis, and Stitches, to name a few – I came to the conclusion that lousy lives make for better storytelling. This is where Michel Rabagliati’s Canadian comics defy parameters: he writes and draws of a happy life, that’s both a pleasure and a tragedy to read. The story begins with a sneaker hanging from a wire, foreshadowing an abrupt and shocking end to a wonderful childhood.

    The story begins simple enough: Paul Riforiati is ten years old, like to eat Aero Bars, watches cartoons, draws comics, gets chased by a red-haired girl his age, and enjoys the child-friendly atmosphere of Montreal. He’s introduced to a Catholic scout troop (though it’s not clear if it’s part of the mainstream Boy Scout movement) and meets a whole new set of kids. And new adults. But is there something else going on here? Could the scout masters have a hidden motive for their involvement? The story is told against the backdrop of the FLQ and the October Crisis, and if you’re not familiar with Canadian history, you may need to do a quick web search.

    The character of Paul is a French-speaking Quebecois, though the family has absolutely no use for nationalism. They view the Front Liberte de Quebec as a nuisance, and the conservative Catholics probably see it as Communist. One of the scoutmasters is a beret-wearing leftist college student named Daniel Sabourin, who may or may not be involved with FLQ. It’s left to the reader to wonder, is the scout troop really a front for the nationalists? Is it some kind of recruiting effort? The scouts have to be Catholic, and despite one of the scoutmasters being a Priest, there doesn’t seem to be any religion involved. Is the requirement that they be Catholic really just a way of keeping Anglos or Jews out?

   The motives of the scoutmasters are another issue that’s left to the reader. While one of them is ordained, the scoutmaster named Ballou is revealed to be gay and living with a man. His lover boyfriend, disappointed in how much time Ballou spends on the scout troop, actually questions his motives, saying, “You must like seeing those boys in their little shorts!” Yet there’s no sign anywhere of inappropriate behavior among the adults in the equation. Then there’s Akela, working in a factory, and refusing to join the coworkers on their tours of the strip joints (hey, did I mention that Montreal was somehow the strip club capitol of North America?). Is Akela really gay and closeted? Ballou probably has a job where nobody will question is lifestyle, but Akela, if he is in fact gay, would probably have to keep it hidden. Is the scout troop a substitute for these men having no children of their own?

    In terms of family, Rabagliati portrays his mother as a sexy, vivacious woman, proud of her looks and enjoying her life as a stay-at-home parent. The only problem is her mother-in-law, who lives across the hall, and with whom she’s locked in a messy power struggle. Her obese bachelor brother-in-law lives with his mother and he’s another thorn in her side. The family are what we’d consider middle class: they have a spacious apartment, the kids have their own rooms, and they dress well. One of the recurring themes in the Paul Riforiati saga is how he always finds himself to be better-off than others. He wears Adidas sneakers (not exactly the priciest of shoes) but the other scout wears far cheaper ones.

   Rabagliati begins with that image of the shoe hanging on the wire, the result of a car crash that kills everyone. Except Paul. Staying home from the scout trip, thanks to a broken leg, saves him from the accident. Though the loss of his friends is never mentioned in later episodes of the book, I wonder if he develops survivor’s guilt? Could it explain his lack of motivation later on? Then there’s the stadium for the 1976 Olympics, which we see in the later episode Paul Up North. The ’76 Olympics will be another disappointment for the family.

   Perhaps this book is some kind of metaphor for disappointment? The kid goes from being a bit of a loner, to an avid Boy Scout, to losing his friends in the space of one day. The ending is shocking.

Stepping Stones by Lucy Knisley

 

Forgive me if I’ve written his before, but todays graphic memoirs all share a  character, namely the feeble mother. Let’s recap a little. In The Arab of the Future, the feeble mother allows herself to be dragged to the worst country in the world; in Be Prepared, the feeble mother is completely ignorant of her children’s feelings; in Cub, the idiot other thinks of her daughter as a puppet and an avatar. Now we have the memoir Stepping Stones, where the feeble mother allows her boyfriend to verbally abuse her daughter. Feeble moms make for a great story.

Lucy Knisley, the cartoonist who gave us the graphic memoirs Relish (brilliant), Age of License (self-obsessed story mediocre artwork), Displacement (better), Something New (don’t bother), and Kid Gloves (okay), is finally looking back on her life. Stepping Stones has good quality drawing, and she mines her life story to create a serious comic for young readers. It’s all about moving to the country, getting used to a new environment, dealing with new people, and having to share your new home with strangers. What I have trouble dealing with is the adult character’s behavior.

The protagonist is Jennifer McGinnis, born in NYC (though the neighborhood is not mentioned), who moves upstate with her mother. Now they live on a large property that her mother is turning into a farm, complete with chickens, a henhouse, and crops that they sell in the farmer’s market. However, the so-called farm sees more like a large hobby garden, because I don’t see how they could gain much in revenue from such a small farm. The chickens have an interesting role in the story: they’re cute pets, and they’re an unwanted chore, and they’re a source of conflict between Jen and her new stepsister.

Dealing with a new and unfamiliar adult in the house is one of the many unpleasant issues that Jen faces. Walter the stepfather is an obnoxious, high-handed loudmouth, legitimately annoying, and Jen believes (perhaps correctly) that he takes pleasure in putting her down. He repeatedly calls her Jenny, and not Jen, which she prefers. I have to wonder, what could an adult could gain by calling a child by her non-preferred name? Does it make him feel powerful? Is it a way to let off steam? He chews her out, browbeats her constantly, and all this goes on under her mother’s nose. When Jen runs off crying, her mother tries to comfort her by saying “well, he’s like that.”

In a story like this, I’m tempted to assume that Jen’s change of scenery will be a learning experience. I’d assume that the protagonist will conquer these nasty people, learn new skills, and go from being the victim to the victor. Nope, that doesn’t happen. In the first scene of the book, she explores the hayloft, finds barn kittens, brings them some food, and relaxes by lying in the hay and drawing the kittens. Everything is good…..until she hears her name called. It’s hard to enjoy learning, if hearing your name is a sign of trouble.

Peer relationships are explored well in Stepping Stones. While the stepfather is the primary antagonist, Jen’s stepsister Andrea is an antagonist and foil combined. When we think of the stepsister in children’s books, we tend to assume the villainous fairy tale character, or (thanks to Disney) the ugly jealous interloper. We get the opposite of that in Stepping Stones: the evil stepsister is neither ugly (she looks like a normal kid) nor jealous, and I say that because she considers everything Jen is or has to be inferior. She’s incredibly self-satisfied, and she looks at Jen as a poor and incompetent child who needs to be helped. Andrea is an obnoxious know-it-all, a myopic bulldozer, and her level of paternalism towards Jen is astounding. You know for sure that she isn’t jealous, because if she sees something she wants, she just goes ahead and takes it. On her first day at the farm, she immediately starts naming the chickens, despite Jen’s polite protest that she already gave them names. Andrea openly criticizes everything Jen does, and her father backs her up, always reminding Jen that she needs to let Andrea “teach” her. This is not a way to motivate a child. You really get the feeling of Jen’s powerlessness, and how everyone is ganging up on her.

A side plot to the story is the farmer’s market. Jen’s mother makes her work at their stall, despite the girl having a clear and present case of dyscalculia, and her inability to make change becomes a big conflict. All the while, I’m wondering about two things: first, why does she make her daughter run the till when she knows the kid can’t do the math, and second, why doesn’t this idiot give her daughter a calculator. When Jen goofs up at making the change, her mother says, “you told me your father was doing flash cards with you!” In this scene the feeble mother really rises to her level of incompetence.

I have to wonder if this book is suitable for young readers. There’s nothing wrong with the language, and the illustrations are great, plus we could always do with a book about kids dealing with divorce. But who wants a story about a kid being verbally abused? An English teacher could still use this book a s prompt on problem-solving, and the assignment could be on how Jen could respond to her stepfather’s remarks.

I give five stars for the artwork. They’re all done in earth tones, and you can almost smell the grass, the trees, and the mustiness of the ground. There aren’t any bright colors, and that’s perfect, because there’s nothing colorful about a helpless, powerless kid surrounded by people who gang up on her.

Not by the Sword, by Kathryn Watterson

  Larry Trapp, Grand Dragon of the Nebraska Ku Klux Klan makes an announcement: he’s going to blow up the Synagogue in Lincoln, massacre the entire Jewish population, and then do the same to the blacks (and if he’s smart, he’ll spare the Jewish doctors, black orderlies, and Vietnamese nurses.) The police do nothing. The citizens are apathetic. So what can the Synagogue Cantor do? Knowing that Trapp is blind and legless, he picks up the phone and says “need a ride?” I mean come on, what does Cantor Weisser have to lose? He figures he’s doomed anyway, because the same group of racists destroyed a Vietnamese community center, and the police weren’t much help with that one. But when Weisser finally meets (what he thinks is) this powerful, menacing monster of a Klansman, he’s in for a surprise. He know that Trapp is disabled and can’t see, but even worse, Trapp is not a hard-driven man with any resolve.  He’s just a lonely guy, hiding behind a large bear, dying of diabetes, and never recovered from an abusive childhood. They invite the guy over for dinner on Shabbat, and by Sunday he’s thrown his white hood in the trash.

    Back in the 1990’s, I watched documentaries about white supremacists, and they were all the same: disaffected young people, alienated from their parents, hopelessly drifting through life, and without adult guidance.  Then along comes a manipulative adult, flatters these kids with attention (or alcohol) and they’re now in his clutches. Trapp was an adult when he joined the Klan, but just like those poor kids, he fell into the web that his “benefactors” had spun. It was after Weisser treated him as an equal, and not a pawn, that Trapp would see that he was wrong (and had been wronged). It would not only be a time where he’d ask for forgiveness, but also find the strength to forgive his own father, who’d pretty much destroyed the family.

    Now let’s look at these two main characters; Larry Trapp is a working class Midwesterner, and Mordecai Weisser is a Jew from New York. You might think they have nothing in common, but they do. Both had troubled childhoods, both had lousy parents, and both did time in jail. Weisser had a non-typical childhood for a Jewish-American: raised in a broken home, in and out of youth reformatories, looking for acceptance with the wrong crowd. The difference is that Weisser discovered his Jewish roots and found a strong community to be part of. Trapp didn’t. So while Weisser found a happy career, Trapp drifted through life, escaping into the bottle. Weisser obviously senses what Trapp’s troubles really are. Perhaps his own rough childhood has gave him a kind of telepathy?

    Trapp was dead within a few months. In the years after this story took place, Weisser and his wife divorced, he took a post in New Zealand, returned to the USA and became the Rabbi of an old congregation in Flushing, Queens. The neighborhood had few Jews left when he arrived, not because of anti-Semitism, but because they simply got old. The area is now 90% Chinese and Korean, so the Synagogue is like a lone holdout. Things are not what they were in 1994, with fewer hate groups to join and former skinheads have left their past behind. Weisser’s congregation in Flushing had no conflict with the Asian community in any manner whatsoever. Why would they? The social dynamic is far different.  They’re like two ships passing in lanes half a mile apart, neither one’s interests conflicting with the other.

   I read a similar book, Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead by Frank Meink. The author was just like Larry Trapp; abused kid, horrible neighborhood, then the racists show up and give him something to belong to. He had no real beef with the blacks, and there were none where he lived. His problem was that he was a lost boy. Essentially, that’s what Trapp was, and the Weissers didn’t have to try that hard to bring him in from the cold. But Meink had to go to jail to see the error in his ways. All Weisser had to do to change Larry Trapp was to offer to meet him face to face.

   When my mother read this book, she wasn’t especially impressed. With a look of annoyance, she said “No wonder it got the Saint Christopher medal, this is the kind of book that Christians just love!” Now you must understand, my parents are part of a strict sect of Judaism, so there’s a lot they’ll expect of a book that has anything to do with Judaism. My mother may have thought that Cantor Weisser’s interest in Judaism was shallow: she expects a Jewish clergyman to be a bit more scholarly. But over the years, I’ve realized that it plays into a desire that people have, and that is to seek peace through mutual understanding and cooperation. Look at the current movement for Restorative Justice as an example, where people try to reduce crime by encouraging dialogue.  

    Back in 1999, a man named Buford Furrow shot and killed a bunch of people over their skin color. He was a failed engineer, and despite having no experience in military or law enforcement, was made a Lieutenant of security for the Aryan Nations. He was known to be proud of his rank, which outside of the racist gang meant nothing to anyone.  Fourteen years after shooting an immigrant mailman and several children, he admitted that he was wrong. It’s not unusual for young killers to say “we were bored” or for a terrorist to have been a beta male in life. That’s the essence here; bored, angry, hopeless, and wanting to feel stronger. It’s a bad combination. But thanks to some strong minded people, there is hope. Cantor Weisser believed in the Jewish ethic of forgiveness: first you learn why your actions were wrong, then you admit your wrongs, and finally, you consciously cease to transgress. By being the first to treat this Klansman as an equal, Weisser brought him to see the error in his ways and make amends for all his wrongs.

I wonder if lives would’ve been spared if Weisser had gotten to Buford Furrow.