GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR CON
In space no one can hear you tweet. Actually, they can. We do.
Remember last Fall when our dear leader called theirs “Little Rocket Man” and more recently tweeting that his [atomic Armageddon] button is bigger? Name-calling, double-downing and one-upmanship has worked for him in the Bronx for 70 years, so why shouldn’t it work in international diplomacy. So he thinks.
Did he get the epithet from “Rocket Man,” the Elton John song from the 70’s? Even if he did hear it back then when it was played hourly on the radio he’s forgotten, suppressed or repressed it and now thinks he made it up all by himself just last year. I doubt that he is aware of these rather prescient lyrics:
I’m not the man they think I am at home
Oh, no, no, no.
I’m a rocket man
Rocket man burning out his fuse up here alone”
And even better:
And all this science I don’t understand
It’s just my job five days a week
A rocket man, a rocket man”
His tweets and interviews and speeches are posted verbatim on the lefty sites, where I get my news, but I’ve heard they are never quoted on the right wing ones. They are only interpreted. Why is that? Perhaps because his own words his own worst enemy. Nor can they be called FAKE NEWS! as they are his words. He doesn’t deny them, other than the Access Hollywood tape.
Read some of the tweets and watch or read his interviews or speeches and tell me “spaced out” is not a good description of him being himself on record. If you are being polite, that is. But being polite no longer seems the right thing to do.
Then there’s David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” which preceded John’s “Rocket Man” by three years and maybe ever inspired it. It, too, feels prescient. Here are some foreboding lyrics from it:
This is Ground Control to Major Tom
You’ve really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose shirt you wear
Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today”
The media, “the papers” dissect Big Rocket Man’s every slur (both meanings of that word) When he dares leave the capsule—gets out of reach of his handlers—to tweet unedited and do ad hoc interviews/speeches, he does so “in a most peculiar way” And the “stars look very different today” Again a double entendre: Stars as what you see when you are disoriented after an unexpected event. Any event that places him in an unflattering light are unexpected to him. This is happening a lot these days. Also stars as famous people praising him, then not being stars when they don’t. So the stars he sees change day by day.
For a little comic relief watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lul-Y8vSr0I a “Rocket Man” by a real rocket man. OK, he only played one on TV, but so does Big Rocket Man. Still, even after you’ve heard William Shatner sing, wouldn’t you rather he were in the White House instead of the “Space Cowboy” currently there? Shatner is Canadian born, so that’s out, too bad. Let’s end this post with more insight from Bowie’s song with my apologies for a slight modification:
Here he is floating in his tin hat
Far above the Moon
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do”
And there’s nothing you can do either except to wait and see. Waiting for those who can do something, but so far haven’t. Hoping for the best—an end to this nonsense that doesn’t involve violence.
The captions “not so good/much better” in the pictures google translated: no tan bueno/mucho mejor, не так хорошо/гораздо лучше, 不太好/好多
