"[Trump] has managed in this crisis to tell us both that he is all-powerful and that he takes no responsibility for anything."

"And I suspect that this creepy vaudeville act, in a worried and tense country, is beginning to wear real thin. A man who claims total power but only exercises it to protect his personal interests, a man who vaunts his own authority but tolerates no accountability for it, is impressing no one. While governors are acting, Trump is chattering. While people are dying, Trump is bragging about his own ratings, signing his name on stimulus checks, pushing quack remedies, and abetting conspiracy theories about Chinese laboratories. And although there is a rump group of supporters who will follow Trump anywhere and may launch tea party–style protests against social distancing on his behalf, I suspect this fundamental unseriousness after responding to the virus so late is finally taking its toll. The emergency I feared Trump could leverage to untrammeled power may, in fact, be the single clearest demonstration of his incompetence and irrelevance. Combine this with a calamitous depression and I’m beginning to wonder if it matters that Biden is the Abraham Simpson of American politics. Maybe Biden doesn’t need to win this thing. Maybe Trump could lose it all by himself."

That's the Andrew Sullivan perspective (from this week's NY Magazine column).

I wondered — because I'm always looking for the exit door — whether there really ever were vaudeville acts that could be called "creepy." The internet quickly served up "The Dancing Pig" (from 1907):



I laughed and even squealed at one point (toward the end, so watch the whole thing).

Here's how I summarize the story in that vaudeville video: If a male chauvinist pig would just become a woman and dance, we could all be happy — maybe too happy.

Oh, I went back in the door. I read the quoted Sullivan passage carefully. I said out loud "Who's Abraham Simpson?" I thought it was some English reference I needed to research — someone in the orbit of Wallis Simpson perhaps — familiar to Andrew Sullivan but out of the range of things I've ever been interested in. I resorted to the intent again. D'oh! It's Grampa Simpson from "The Simpsons." Sullivan seems to just be conceding that Joe Biden is a mentally impaired senior.