DONALD TRUMP CHANNELS ARCHIE BUNKER
Guest Columnist/cleveland.com By Charles E. Kraus
[From Cleveland Plain Dealer 6/26/16 web and printed versions]
Predictions had it that once Donald Trump secured the nomination, he'd move to the middle. Instead, he's moved to 704 Hauser Street. That's Archie Bunker's old address — the neighborhood is now upscale, pricey enough for ... well, how about Trump Astoria?
Trump goes there, in his mind, when he wishes to mingle with the common folks. You know, "that black guy over there ... great guy. Nice. I love him."
Don and Arch use the same limited vocabulary, sounding like 14-year-olds experiencing a transformation process that will help them reach a level of sophistication often associated with 15-year-olds.
Arch didn't have much in the way of formal education. He was blue collar, a victim of his time and place in society. He worked on the loading docks after serving overseas in World War II, earning a Purple Heart for taking shrapnel in the rear end.
Trump was born into golden diapers. He was prep-schooled at the New York Military Academy. (Although receiving four draft deferments and never serving in the actual military, Trump claims attending this boarding school gave him lots of insight into being a soldier.) He then attended Fordham University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Somehow, Trump never encountered a thesaurus. Members of his team are Great. Terrific. Fantastic. The Best. Foes are Bad Bad people. Sluts. Ugly.
Trump overflows with tired, hackneyed, stock phraseology. "Meathead," Archie's favorite epithet, out-trumps Trump.
Trump overflows with tired, hackneyed, stock phraseology.
Expand your lexicon, expand your mind. Identifying and examining issues requires noticing and categorizing. Words identify concepts. But nuance is for middle management. If you are truly wealthy, you don't have to learn gradations or complex, critical thinking. You just tell staff, "Get me the best."
Fans of "All In the Family" may protest my comparing Archie and Donald. The show's creator, Norman Lear, gave his television character some endearing qualities. I haven't noticed similar attributes in Mr. Trump.
The New York guys do share a few tendencies. Archie was a bigot, suspicious of blacks, Hispanics and anyone practicing a religion that wasn't spelled WASP. Like Don, he believed every conspiracy theory, every superficial, unexamined, simplistic explanation for the multifaceted challenges faced by society and planet Earth.
But Archie wasn't out to trick anyone. The guy wasn't a schemer. His opinions were genuine, sincerely held, if misguided, beliefs. They didn't require clarifications, convoluted explanations or denials. It is Trump, or his ghost writers, who wrote a book filled with tips about manipulating people.
There is another difference between these characters, perhaps the most important of all. Archie is made-up. He's fiction. When the CBS Television studio lights were dimmed, he turned into Carroll O'Connor, a levelheaded actor.
Trump didn't spring from someone's imagination. Sadly, he's for real.
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The closest that Charles E. Kraus got to the late actor Carroll O'Connor was when he worked in CBS-TV's Music Rights Department and shared a wall with O'Connor's office. Kraus now lives in Seattle.
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