As any regular reader of this blog should have realized by now, I take great pleasure in demonstrating what I believe is the most powerful tool when it comes to creative thinking–the ability to make connections where none seem to exist. It begins with an observation about which one then asks, “What is this trying to tell me? How might it be relevant to something I’m working on?”
This morning, my first observation was, “I’m really looking forward to tonight. I’ve been anticipating the Disney+ channel’s release of its cinematic version of Hamilton for weeks, and today is the day.” Yet, there is more to it than that. This is the Lin-Manuel Miranda era. Talk about a media superstar whose influence transcends his own arena. It is no coincidence John Bolton called his recent book The Room Where It Happened. an obvious rip-off of one of the most memorable songs from Miranda’s Broadway tour de force.
But the still small voice of imagination which occupies a corner of my brain told me to keep pushing. What am I missing? The answer is always there if you connect the dots. Was the next data point a one-liner from a Steven Wright comedy album I listened to last night? “I was once walking through the forest alone. A tree fell right in front of me, and i didn’t hear a thing.”
Interesting, but that voice kept nagging me, “Keep pushing. There are still more dots.” This morning I was awakened by the dog which resides at the house that backs up to our lot. There lay the key. It is not always what you see or hear. You have to consider what you did not observe or a sound that was absent. SPOILER ALERT. This is the very essence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes is recruited by Dr. James Mortimer to investigate the death of his former patient Sir Charles Baskerville whose demise is initially determined to be the result of a fatal coronary.
Mortimer suspects Sir Charles’ heart attack was triggered when he may have encountered a mysterious black hound which reportedly wandered the manor grounds and had been responsible for the earlier death of Hugo Baskerville. Holmes becomes frustrated with the lack of clues and tangible evidence. Until he questions the owner of the adjacent estate Jack Stapleton. Holmes notices the Stapletons’ pet Mastiff barks at anyone who approaches the house with the exception of its owner Jack. Holmes surmises the Stapleton’s hound was the animal in question, since no one in the vicinity of the murder site saw or heard anything the night of the murder.
Which brings me back to John Bolton, especially in light of his latest disclosure he had, in fact, briefed Donald Trump on the Russian bounty program through which the Kremlin allegedly paid Taliban insurgents for killing coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. Based on this latest revelation, I wondered if the more appropriate title for Bolton’s 600 page tome should have been The Room Where It Didn’t Happen. Re-enter Steven Wright who, impersonating Bolton, might have described the March 2019 episode in the Oval Office as follows. “I was once talking to Trump, with no one else in the room. Right in front of me, he ignored my warning about a Russian threat to American Soldiers, and I didn’t do a thing.”
We have a pretty good idea what historians will have to say about Donald Trump in the context of 244 years of American presidential history. Already, John Meacham, Doris Kearns Goodwin and Douglas Brinkley have not suppressed their disdain for Trump’s violation of presidential norms and disrespect for the office he holds. What we also need to know is how many senior advisors, besides Bolton, listened to Trump’s conspiracy theories and proposed violations of his oath of office, and never challenged him or threatened to go public. In Miranda’s next political musical Trump, the Oval Office becomes “The Room Where it Didn’t Happen.” This important retelling of the past four years may be the legacy of those who surrounded him, the “Hounds of Trumpville,” who barked at everyone except their master.
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
And there it was, as plain as the nose on my face. 1983. The Dresser. Peter Yates’ adaption of Ronald Harwood’s play, “the story of an aging actor’s personal assistant, who struggles to keep his charges’s life together.” (Wikipedia) Is it mere coincidence the elderly thespian, played by Albert Finney, is referred to only as “Sir,” the same honorific Trump employs whenever sharing a conversation he has with anyone ranging from a MAGA-head to a member of his cabinet to a four-star general. Sir is described as “of the old school of acting, full of grand gestures and fine oratory.” However in his final performance as King Lear, Sir is uncertain of his lines and begins to improvise his speeches. Sound familiar?
Perhaps the network had second thoughts after several Twitter accounts noted the report had been filed by OANN correspondent Kristian Rouz. Rouz joined OANN in August 2017 as a political reporter. Despite his new affiliation, Rouz remains on the payroll of Sputnik, which as disclosed by The Daily Beast, is “a Kremlin-owned news wire that played a role in Russia’s 2016 election-interference operation, according to an assessment by the U.S. intelligence community.”
Maybe some of you aging, more COVID-19 susceptible folks remember the original CNN Headline News with Lynne Russell. Every 30 minutes you got a version of the news Sargent Friday (Jack Webb) would be proud of, “Just the facts, ma’am.” News based on the basic principles of journalism: who, what, when, where and how. For a medium which characterizes the current administration as a “reality TV show,” the mirrors in the make-up rooms of every cable news studio must be draped in sack cloth. Their programs now consist of a series of cliff-hangers, unintended parodies of that old joke, “Global apocalypse; details at eleven.”