Donald Trump Has Got A Cold, Plus
Unaffordable magazines I wish I had subscriptions to, plus music
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We’re coming up on the 60th anniversary of Gay Talese’s seminal profile of Frank Sinatra in Esquire Magazine, called “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.” Published in April of 1966, the piece is credited as both a foundational example of New Journalism and the greatest celebrity profile of all time.
I think about it a lot, at least compared to any other piece of 60-year-old journalism, and today I was thinking about this passage in particular in connection with our current predicament.
Sinatra with a cold is Picasso without paint, Ferrari without fuel—only worse. For the common cold robs Sinatra of that uninsurable jewel, his voice, cutting into the core of his confidence, and it affects not only his own psyche but also seems to cause a kind of psychosomatic nasal drip within dozens of people who work for him, drink with him, love him, depend on him for their own welfare and stability. A Sinatra with a cold can, in a small way, send vibrations through the entertainment industry and beyond as surely as a President of the United States, suddenly sick, can shake the national economy.
It’s that last line that particularly struck me this morning. Our current president-cum-dictator has been suddenly sick a few times—indeed, was recently rumored to be dead—but gamblers in the markets appeared to be relatively unmoved. After Trump announced his Covid diagnosis on October 2, 2020, the stock market, which had crashed in March when the disease grabbed us by the national scruff and shook, turned in one of its best weeks, if a volatile one, in an otherwise bleak month.
Market whisperers claimed to hear the spirit of the NYSE muttering “oh please oh please oh please.” Or maybe that was just me.
More recently, late in August of this year when Trump vanished from view and the White House cleared his public calendar, Dow Jones investors responded to rumors of his death by pushing the market modestly higher. And after he surfaced on the last Saturday of the month, the Dow opened lower on the following Monday.
As with so many other presidential traditions, Trump excepts the rule that a sick president rattles the nation. We are, it seems, on average, at worst financially indifferent to his suffering or his absence.
Looking at the market reactions to his frailties got me thinking about what would happen if Trump does die or is otherwise incapacitated to the point where he no longer sits atop the regime.
Markets, which is to say investors and traders and the individuals who run the companies they trade, are said to hate uncertainty. Yet here we are living in what cannot be described as anything but uncertain times, and investors are going nuts, regularly pushing the Dow and other indexes to new records. You see the occasional blips on the financial instruments side, bonds and treasury bills and the like, but those people, man—those people in the main are loving this shit.
There are indications, I’m told, that this is changing or likely to change as the consequences of a deranged economic policy kick in for those of us not already bludgeoned by inflation and unemployment—those of us with the money to ride most shit out—but it hasn’t happened yet.
So how much more uncertain, and not just financially or economically, could things get in the event of a prolonged or permanent Trump absence? The question probably deserves more attention than it seems to be drawing, as the guy is old and clearly unhealthy despite the increasingly occasional displays of perhaps medicinally-inspired vigor. Despite a history of crappy prognostication, I have some thoughts.
Whomever takes charge will end or at least sanitize the tariffs, giving stock market enthusiasts a boost and the rest of us a bit of a break;
The line of succession is questioned for the first time ever, giving stock market enthusiasts conniptions;
Backed by a voting majority of oligarchs, JD Vance emerges with a firm grip on the nation’s pony reins, soothing the sandpapered nerves of investors;
MAGA Nation splits on whether antifa or Vance killed or disabled, whichever, the head of state;
MAGA Nation coalesces around the antifa theory after Vance discovers prominent Vance theorists wearing false mustaches while running drugs in the Caribbean;
Peter Thiel rejoices as Elon Musk kicks himself for routinely mocking the only regime official with as thin a skin as Trump, and who idolizes Thiel at that;
Vance criminalizes thought among the masses, recognizing that even supportive thoughts are potentially inimical to regime interests;
The regime nationalize state and local library systems and appoint MutantKennedy as the administrator, who locks the doors and has “Do Your Own Research” inscribed above them all.
Could we face a bureaucratic war of succession? Leaks of couch-fueled debauchery? A Khrushchev-style denunciation of Trump? Would whatever happens serve as the excuse to declare martial law, if we’ve not already done that?
Fuck if I know. What do you think? Somebody should make a plan.
Unaffordable magazines I wish I had subscriptions to
Some of the sources I most like to read are specialty journals, which have never been generous with their material and are increasingly less so. One of those is STAT, a medical news and opinion site which has lots of accessibly-presented news and information about the business of medicine and related topics; generally nothing you can’t find elsewhere if you hunt for it, other than the opinion columns, but there’s a lot of value in having large volumes of information in one place and they charge accordingly. (One of the headlines this morning provided the first indication I had of further cuts at the former health and human services agency, but the story is paywalled.)
Another specialty site is the Chronicle of Higher Education, with the focus you would expect from a magazine of that name. As with STAT, you can find about everything except the opinion columns elsewhere but not in one place.
Real time-savers, with reporting more often than not superior to what you can find on the same subjects in less expensive, less fiercely paywalled and more generalist publications. My state library system’s magazine collections don’t include either. I am sad.
There are others but I have a cold and have run out of steam.
Music
Public Service Broadcasting, “Night Mail”
Jay Som, “What You Need”
Albertine Sarges, “Girl Missing”
Freak Slug, “Blue Eyes”
Pale Blue Eyes, “The Park”
Annabelle Chairlegs, “Ice Cream on the Beach”
Horsegirl, “Julie Demo 2”
The Bouncing Souls, “Power”
Social Distortion, “Ball and Chain”
And that, Comrades in Affliction, is all I got. Be well, take care, consider subscribing if you haven’t and may your favorite deity bless you if you have.