If you’ve had kids or grandkids growing up any time during the last 20 years or so, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the book, The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. It’s a compilation of fractured fairy tales, entirely nutty, entirely hilarious and just a bit subversive. For example, there’s the one about the Ugly Duckling who grows up to become not a swan but just a really ugly duck. Or the one about the Frog Prince, a slimy amphibian who uses a fraudulent claim of royalty to con kisses from unsuspecting princesses. There are a lot of imposters and con men (and women) in the book.
The title story is about a little man made of stinky cheese (with bacon for a mouth and olives for eyes), who runs away from the little old lady who made him and boasts to everyone he meets, “Run, run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the Stinky Cheese Man” — only no one wants to chase him because he smells so bad. He finally meets his comeuppance in the form of a fox who for some unexplained reason doesn’t smell his rank odor at first. I’ve come to the conclusion that the fox must have had a really bad head cold. But if he did, Stinky’s stink is powerful enough to insinuate itself into the fox’s clogged sinuses at the worst possible time — resulting in the watery demise of the little man made of cheese.
I don’t have to tell you that we have an arrogant, boastful, and utterly malodorous Stinky Cheese Man in our midst ... and he’s run-run-running for president. And apparently his supporters all have head colds — or they’ve convinced themselves that his rotten-garbage odor is actually the sweet smell of success.
I’m offering this little book report/political commentary because a while back I wrote a stage adaptation of The Stinky Cheese Man. It has proven to be very popular and has been produced at theaters and schools, large and small, all over the country. The other day I received a royalty check for the productions that have taken place in the last six months, a grand total of $270 (you don’t go into children’s theatre to get rich). I’ve decided to donate those proceeds in their entirety to the Clinton campaign.
Because Trump may look like a Cheeto, but he smells like Limburger. And while a single fox might be enough to sink a fictional stinker, in the real world it takes a village. A very large village. If you’re like me, you may have been lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that coming out of the primaries Hillary had so much more money in the bank than the Cheeze-ter — but in Wednesday’s New York Times came this sobering report:
Donald J. Trump all but erased his enormous financial disadvantage against Hillary Clinton in the span of just two months, according to figures released by his campaign on Tuesday, converting the passion of his core followers into a flood of small donations on a scale rarely seen in national politics.
That means lots of Trump ads and anti-Clinton ads will flood the airwaves in swing states in the 100 days left before the election. She needs to be able to respond forcefully and often. So please join me and give what you can to the Clinton campaign. I’m not suggesting you match my contribution (if you can, go for it), but maybe you can manage 10% of it, which comes to … hm, looks like $27. I like the sound of that.
Let’s get rid of this godawful stink once and for all.