Okay, I get it. I am too old to understand what is going on today. So, a warning: if you are under seventy years of age, you will probably wonder at my context. If you think it too out of touch, ask your father or mother to interpret. If you care.
My first fight was at a summer camp. After almost throwing up in the ring, I decided boxing was not my thing. Several decades later I travelled to St. Louis to watch a real boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on a giant (at the time) movie screen. It was the fight Frazier won, although Ali was more enjoyable to watch.
Donald Trump, just days after being elected President, went to Madison Square Garden (MSG) to watch a cage match presented by the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
Fights are preceded by a hate blitz. The fighters in these promoted spectacles, rarely real ones, are provided with a vocabulary of the worst possible names to call their opponents. Apparently a large number of people are magnetized by these bouts of name-calling and pay real money to become not so much a spectator as an essential part of the production.
I would guess after a campaign to be President there is a necessary primal scream. Just days before the President-Elect headed off to MSG his primal scream, the indicated nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz to be Attorney General, was announced.
Now to be fair to Trump the Department of Justice that Gaetz has been nominated to head has aggressively pursued Trump’s prosecution. This was not just name-calling stuff. I will leave it to others to debate the fairness of what Justice’s Special Prosecutor, Jack Smith did, but I can’t help but comment on the President’s primal scream because Gaetz is not only not qualified to be Attorney General, if he gets confirmed it will be a precipitous step toward the undoing of Trump’s second term in the White House. We should care, after all when the election is over the winner is our President, the term four years.
First, almost nobody, Republican and Democrat alike, who has spent sixty seconds thinking about this offered nomination, believes it is a good thing. Horrible is the adjective. It would have been better if the President-Elect had been inspired by Mike Tyson’s late-in-life trip to the boxing ring and taken out his anger on, well, anybody.
The co-founder of the conservative The Federalist news site, Benjamin Domenech, lit into Representative Matt Gaetz Thursday, calling him a “sex trafficking drug addicted piece of s —-t”, warning senators that “they will have to live with themselves if they confirm him as Attorney General.” Domenech went on to say “the man is absolutely vile. There are pools of vomit with more to offer the earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity”, New York Post. First word to mind, Wow! And if you are put off by my citing a single quote, do your own research.
Finally, I would ask whether integrity, “the quality of being honest” plays any role in a confirmation hearing? Or in the job to be done? Beyond experience, reputation and testimony what should the US Senate’s inquiry cover? Should we want the pursuit of truth to precede decisions?
Senators have been elected to be the deciders. They get to decide whether a person is qualified to lead a cabinet office. This needs to be understood as an important job. It should be done carefully.
Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.
