I get that writing for a living can be hard sometimes. It can be difficult to find a voice. Or a platform. Or any reason at all to remain an ink-stained wretch instead of, say, trying one’s hand at perpetual lighthouse-sitting.
Unless you’re Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, the pay is frequently low, the laurels few and far between, and the indignities often serial. And publishers can often be dismissive, like when I shopped my cookbook featuring popular recipes rendered entirely in the voice of Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs:
It prepares the zesty marinade
It preheats the oven to 425°
It bastes the quail before it places it in the roasting pan
It plates the mango salsa or else it gets the hose again
Not sure what the hell Simon & Schuster was thinking, but there it is. Still trying to grab that elusive brass ring, I guess.
As a writer, one thing I would never do, however, is grease the skids for fascism. But a lot of (mostly bad) writers and other creatives appear to have no such compunction, and so they’re all aboard the ramshackle steam locomotive formerly known as the Trump Train.
So if writing fundraising emails and “Trump Cards” for The Former Guy’s political operation (i.e., mound of loose cash that DJT has unfettered access to) is the jewel in your oeuvre, you may just want to hang up your quill and try something else.
Which brings us to this horrifying juncture in our collective Kafkaesque nightmare: Donald Trump wants all his supporters to carry cards signaling their abject and undying fealty to Dear Leader. And he’s hoovering up cash in the process:
"The card you select will be carried by Patriots all around the Country," the first email said. "They will be a sign of your dedicated support to our movement to SAVE AMERICA, and I'm putting my full trust in you."
The Trump team said in a follow-up email, "We're about to launch our Official Trump Cards, which will be reserved for President Trump's STRONGEST supporters."
"We recently met with the President in his Florida office and showed him four designs," the email continued. "Originally we were planning on releasing just one design, but when President Trump saw the cards on his desk, he said, 'These are BEAUTIFUL. We should let the American People decide - they ALWAYS know best!'"
The story doesn't specify whose Trump’s STRONGEST supporters are, of course. I can only assume it’s anyone who clicks on the card image and gets rerouted to the fundraising page.
And, of course, because this is Trump, this promotion has to be both sinister …
And completely incompetent.
Yup, that’s a big, gaudy misspelling smack dab in the middle of Donald Trump’s fascist new cult totem. Because of course it is. I’m “offically” unimpressed. Needless to say, Twitter had some fun with this:
Personally, I’m holding out for the secret decoder ring that tells us what Trump “really” means when he says stuff like “covfefe” and “very fine people on both sides.” Because we’ve been told over and over again that we’re not correctly interpreting his patently offensive gibberish.
Then again, I know some people who would probably hang this on a lanyard around their necks. To each their own, I guess.
It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.