There's a lady on Facebook named Sondra Tucker. (As my friend Gail Sonneman discovered. Hats off to her.) She's a reading teacher. She has figured 45 out.
Leave it to a teacher to do so. She's done so clinically, methodically, and I think very accurately.
45's number one personal issue, that from which everything else flows: He can't read.
At least, he can't read the way most of the rest of us do. He processes slowly. The information keeps rushing past him, kind of the same way Lucille Ball couldn't keep up with the cream puffs in that famously funny scene from "I Love Lucy," so she just gives up after she messes all over herself. That's what happened as the teleprompter sent the lines rushing by during his July 4 speech; he missed a word or two, then tried to catch up and sounded, for a few pathetic seconds, completely incomprehensible, said Tucker. And instead of admitting it--something he simply can't do any longer--he tried to gloss it over.
Tucker figured that out. She sat down and considered him as a child with learning disabilities. Which 45 might easily have been.
That's why he's a bully, too. It's a cover-up for his enormous, crippling insecurities. Anyone who's spent significant time in classrooms knows the type.
And now he's been allowed to cripple the whole country, and perhaps the whole world, behind them. He doesn't know anything about politics, climate, race, even the economy. He knows what he feels, no more, no less, and until now has gotten away with it, the same way some kids get away with moving through schooling without that ultimate accountability. He would know plenty more, but he doesn't care to.
Because he can't read. Of course, since he can't, the time has gone by, he's in his 8th decade, and is way-way too embarrassed to admit it. His life is nearly over, so why bother, ya know?
Who remembers the newspaper comic strip "Crankshaft"? It was a spin-off of "Funky Winkerbean". Crankshaft was a bus driver and grouchy curmudgeon, who knew what he knew and needed to know nothing else. But the strip's creator chose to emphasize adult illiteracy through the strip, so he reveals that Crankshaft is frustrated and has poor self-esteem because he can't read. Embarrassing, yes, but ultimately his salvation, because Crankshaft learns to read and a whole new world opens up to him. Not only that, he finds that it's fun. (It's apparently still around, but I don't get daily papers anymore.)
To him. Not 45, because he's pre-literate Crankshaft.
So he fakes it, or tries to. Wonder if he'll respond by claiming he speed-reads. It reminds me of what Woody Allen said about that: I speed-read "War and Peace" in a day. It was about Russia.
Tucker analyzed 45's July 4 speech and why he confused George Washington with airports, a gaffe that's as sad as it is hilarious. But now we know that it's part of 45's very sad story.
Not being able to read creeps up at a person every day. It frustrates and humiliates. It brings out a person's phony nature--phony because they have to think of something to distract people from knowing someone's ultimate secret. Why does 45 distract so often? Because he's had decades of experience.
If someone finds out, he'll be ridiculed and left as a pitiful subject of derision. Which, I'll bet, he might have been. If we found his grade school/high school classmates, they might be able to shed light on this.
Remember the campaign? "I know many big words." Uh-huh. Surrrre you do.
Every so often, I would manage to get a boy (always a boy) alone after school. He needed some kind of help because his grades were so awful and it seemed like nothing was getting through. History is the kind of subject in which, if you don't or can't read, you get behind the eight-ball pretty quickly if your memory isn't really sharp or if you don't care about the topic.
So I'd sit him down where nobody else was watching and open his textbook to, really, any old page. And I'd ask him to start reading out loud.
It didn't take 30 seconds to know: This kid can't read. Then I'd have to gently tell him that he was an okay kid (though sometimes he wasn't), but his education wouldn't be getting him anywhere without it. Staffings for kids with emotional disabilities revealed much the same, though at times I'd feel sorry for the kid because he/she was exposed in front of all their teachers--an event that had to be incredibly belittling. We were always compassionate, but also direct: You need to fix this.
Did it solve all his problems? Of course not. But though the road to self-esteem may need repairs, it's good to know where the potholes are. Then you fill them, one at a time.
Here's what someone inside the White House needs to do, especially since it's right in the middle of summer vacation: Get a reading teacher from the DC system. It doesn't even have to be the best one. Pay him/her some serious extra cash. Sneak him/her inside during the middle of the day. And teach him how to read better. One hour a day for two weeks.
Get him away from the damn TV set and stop him from thinking how to try to make everybody else look bad. Get him to understand how bad he looks--never mind us; that won't register--making up 11,000 lies (and counting) like how Ronald Reagan said he was going to be president some day. Electronic media allows him to get by because first, it allows him to get some locus of control over messages (which explains the tweets); and second, it lets him have some other outlet for his twisted logic and reality so it appears to have legitimacy (which explains Fox News).
It's perfect. Until now, when the curtain has been pulled back.
Bernie Sanders is right: He's a phony. But in the most fundamental, pathetic way.
This is what we have, America, this where we are: The most powerful man on the planet is actually a sixth-grader who's still pouting, who's still embarrassed, whose self-esteem has no foundation: Crankshaft.
Because he can't read. He feels completely incapable. He's not grown-up, he's still a little boy under all that bluster.
And now Putin will know it. Bin Salmon will know it. Kim Jong Un will know it. And our allies. And Nancy Pelosi. And every Democrat running for president.
Thing is, if he learns how to read even at this late date, he may combine that with his enviable personal skills to get himself re-elected. But I'd be willing to take that chance. Too much is hanging in the balance on a daily basis.
If he refuses, I know what I'd do if I won the Democratic nomination: Put a history book in front of him at the first debate; no pictures. Ask him to read it out loud. Then tell him how pathetic he looks as he yells defensive comments and launches whatever insults he may have at hand. But then, just keep saying it. I'd do it gently, without raising my voice. The point would get through.
You can't read, Donald, can't you? How can you expect to lead the world if you can't even read?
It would be awful. It would create screaming from right-wingers and even mainstream Republicans. They would double down on victimization. But it would drive it all home like a tsunami. We need a president who can read. And it would be absolutely necessary.
Who knows? Everything else has been tried to de-legitimize this awful president. Nothing has worked to get him to clean up his act. But it strikes right to the heart of the true issue--his education. It stunk. He knew it, and his money allowed him to glide right through.
Yes, he deserves derision. But also pity. And it's no reason to vote for him again.
It might set off a new debate and a new trashing of our educational system: Who let this happen? But then we'd have to go deeper. That's a topic for another day.
Think of it: A common reading teacher has struck at the heart of our awful president's awfulness, the reason he needs to do everything else excessively--because he can't do what just about everybody else can do in an even average way: Read. You can rip on the educational system all you want, but for now, it has in its own way allowed us to see 45 clearly, at long last.
Be well. I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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