When Mr. Trump Met Mr. Rogers

Tags

anger, beautiful day, counseling, Donald Trump, Mr. Rogers, New York, PBS, Pittsburgh, politics, President, sadness

 

For years, on PBS, Mr. Rogers gently talked children through the uncertainties of growing up.  We may have thought of him as a semi-fictional character, but the movie — A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — suggests that what we saw was real and that he was as genuine with adults as with children.

His chance encounter with Donald Trump in March, 2000, in New York City, a few weeks after Mr. Trump had abandoned his campaign to be the Reform Party’s Presidential candidate, reinforces Mr. Rogers’ image as eager to help, no matter who or what:

Excuse me, aren’t you Donald Trump?

Every sweet ounce of me.  And who are you?

I’m Fred Rogers, but you may know me as Mr. Rogers.

Yeah, I think I’ve heard of you.  You’re that sort of fairy-like guy on television who talks to kids.  

That might be one way of expressing it.

And you sing about the beautiful neighborhood, which is something I’ve done a lot of.  Not singing, but building wonderful buildings and resorts that are really, y’know, perfectly beautiful.

I’m sure you have and I’m sure they are, though my point is the beauty of the day, no matter what the neighborhood.  But that’s of secondary importance.  More important, you seem to be a bit down.  Is anything the matter?

Naaah!  Well … yes … in fact!  The idiots in the Reform Party have decided they don’t want me as their Presidential candidate.  Enormous mistake!  Really enormous!  But it’s their funeral!

And this makes you sad?

Are you kidding?  No, it doesn’t make me sad.  I don’t do sad.  Never have.  Sad is for suckers and losers!  Sad is moping.  I don’t mope.  I get angry and I get even, and I am angry!

I’m sad that you’re so angry.

Why?

It makes me sad when anyone is upset.  Being upset, being angry, is just sadness looking for a speedy way to be happy again.

What other way is there?  

Well, in your case, since someone other than you will win your party’s nomination, you could be happy for him and, if he wins the election, you could be happy that your party and its principles have won.  After all, that must be what you were hoping for your party and your country if you had won.  

What planet did you say you’re from?

Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh, eh?  This is New York.  I’m a New Yorker.  Ever seen West Side Story?  Do you think the Sharks and the Jets sat down at tea and discussed how to make a better neighborhood, and who would do the better job?  Is everybody in Pittsburgh a pansy like you? 

Ha ha, I think you’re trying to get me to respond angrily, which, if I did, would prove that I’m a hypocrite.  But let’s get back to your situation.  Do you have someone to talk to about your feelings?

It appears that I have you … at least until I can escape.

Ha, yes!  It’s important to have a sense of humor.  But I mean, really, someone you trust, someone who will be with you no matter what.  Your wife?  Your children?  Your friends?

It’s wives plural, which answers that part of the question.  Kids?  Maybe some day, but not now.  And there’s Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone.  But, feelings?  I’d be better off talking to my dog.

You have a dog?  Dogs can help you relieve stress, though they’re not so good at offering advice.

Tell me something I don’t know.  But, look, I’ve got to go.  And, let me be frank.  You’re a nice guy, but you know what they say about nice guys and finishing last.  I’m not a nice guy and I’m not gonna finish last.  I figure, the less nice I am, the more successful I am and, by the way, I’m gonna keep being successful.  Just wait and see.  I’ll be President, maybe not this time, but some time.  Keep your eye out for me!  Anyway, I’ve got to get going.  So long.  (To himself, as he walks away: Man, it’s a good thing that doofus isn’t running for President.)

(Mr. Rogers, to himself, as he walks away:  It certainly is good fortune for the country that a dangerous egotist like him won’t be President.)

The Thirty-Three Steps

Tags

ballot, canvassing, Democrats, election, Obama, political activism, politics, Presidential campaign, Republicans, Romney, soliciting, stairs, voter registration, voting

It takes 4 to become a saint, 12 to get sober, and 39 to make a great Hitchcock movie.  It took me 33 — steps, that is — to earn my Obama campaign merit badge.

When I signed up last spring for the Ground Game, ground was what I was on:  harassing mall crawlers and, in my innocence, registering more Republicans than Democrats; patrolling downtown corners, explaining that the President really doesn’t want to confiscate your gun or nationalize your car dealership; knocking on doors in endless, horizontal suburbs.

My ascent up the canvassing ladder really began when I got more urban and shifted turf to apartment and condo complexes teeming with Obama targets — three-in-a-flat young women; college students; Mexican-Americans; African-Americans; Somali cab drivers; young graduates starting their careers; single mothers.

It was then, on a wicked-hot summer day, that I encountered The 33 Steps, in a pleasant complex with 240 units — 6 units in each of 40 self-contained buildings, each building with 3 floors.  If you’ve been paying attention, you know how many steps there were to the top 2 units.

It may be that Obama’s team crunched numbers better than Romney’s.  I wasn’t so sure.  I hiked the 33 to the top units far more than the 16 it took to the middle ones or the 0 at street-level, in seeming violation of the laws of probability.

I’m not complaining.  By Election Day, my thighs were those of a bicycle racer and my lung capacity, an Ethiopian marathoner’s.  No improvement in reasoning capacity, however, which may be just as well, since I might have realized that, with an answer-per-knock rate around 20%, and an Obama-favorable rate around 70% of that 20%, a single hooked, but not yet netted, Obama voter cost about 200 steps.

33 Steps was not my only beat.  Just down the street was an enormous apartment complex — 9 buildings, none with fewer than 12 apartments per floor, and one with easily 50 on each of its 5 floors, all in open-balcony format.  I could have roller-skated to most of my target doors and taken the elevator to roller-skate the next level.  Best of all, there were no locked gates, complicated phone-entry devices, or menacing property managers.  With a stout heart, a full water-bottle, and about five hours of free time, thoroughly knockable.

Though my end was just, my means were sometimes devious.  In buildings with ostensibly locked lobby doors, some weren’t.  In better-secured buildings, I could at times ooze in, following heedless kids.  Occasionally, residents would breeze out, and the door, swinging lazily shut, would, by chance, catch my foot.  Rear entrances were, shockingly, often not as secure as front doors; in one case, I walked past renovators by posing as someone who knew what he was doing.

On a few occasions, tenants cited No Soliciting rules, but it was half-hearted, and, in one instance, a man followed me, not to confront, but to apologize for being rude when he had suggested I should cease and desist.

For all the stair-climbing and the increasingly raw knuckles (too few doorbells), and besides the satisfaction of the slow accumulation of Obama supporters, there were some genuinely touching moments:

— the woman, an immigrant from Mexico City and a first-time voter, who, the day before Election Day, thought she had lost her mail-in ballot, vowed to search for it, and came running after me as I was leaving the complex, waving her found treasure;

— the college student supporting Obama because he’s the reason I’m able to continue my studies;

— kids from a mutli-ethnic apartment building, watching American patriots firing muskets at Redcoats, in a Saturday-morning Revolutionary War reenactment in the park across the street;

— the boy who guided me from door to door, and, when I told him I was working for the President’s re-election, asked why, if he was already President, he had to be elected again.

With hundreds and hundreds of doors knocked, and despite occasionally skirting the edge of law and custom, I was struck by how remarkably civil people were, whatever their political leanings. I had to wait until Election Day to actually have a door slammed in my face, by an angry Romney voter.  Finally, I thought, a chance to say Fuck You, at least to a closed door.  But, by that time, who had the energy and, anyway, why bother!?