CSI: American Carnage (Monday, April 15, 2019)
WASHINGTON — Kellyanne pats around on the top of her dressing table. Sweetie, she says, have you seen my eyeballs? George is watching the quiz show, Twenty-One, on mute. Charles Van Doren is sweating on the teevee. George says, They’re in your toothbrush cup in the bathroom. Kellyanne gets up and stumbles into the bathroom, finds her eyeballs, and pops them in with a snap. George says, Charley Van Doren just died last week. You know how many Pulitzer Prizes the Van Doren family accumulated? His dad, the poet, Mark, won one; his uncle the biographer, Carl, won one. And what happened to Charley? Ignominy. Shame. A life of working at Britannica. That’s the future of fraudsters; they get to live their lives out writing 200-word articles on Amanita muscaria and the armor of Baron von Steuben. Kellyanne says, Oh sweetie, von Steuben didn’t make use of any armor. You know that. You’re such a joker. George says, At least he cared about what he was doing. Kellyanne says, He didn’t brand his house, now, did he? George says, He got a whole class of glass named after him. Kellyanne says, Oh, honey, that’s only because he had a silly county named for him. He didn’t do anything. He wasn’t named president, he didn’t protect the country like some people I could name. He didn’t go after the terrorists or anything. George says, He took on the king. Kellyanne says, That just proves my point. Sweetie, can you find my nose? George says, You’ve already got it on, Lovie. Look, can you have your ringmaster layoff the incitement against that woman from Minnesota. She’s getting death threats. It’s unseemly. Plus, he doesn’t sound like somebody who wants to solve the immigration crisis, such as it is. You know, she’s been receiving more and more death threats since your man posted that video of the burning towers. Kellyanne says, Honey, this week, you know, respectfully, from the other side you have this anti-Semitic congresswoman. You can’t let that go. George says, Oh? This is your guy: Lies, half-truths, exaggerations, distortions, misrecollections, ignorant misconceptions, wishful thinking, things that randomly pop into his mind that he thinks sound good at any particular moment, random babble—all of things swirl around in his head in an endless jumble. What’s true and what’s not – and what’s consistent with what he’s said previously and what’s not – really doesn’t matter to him. He finds no shame in being caught in a lie, so why should he distinguish truth from falsity in his own mind? Kellyanne says, He doesn’t have to, Sweetie. He’s the president. Can you pass me my thumb? I don’t know where I put it.