The Saga Of The White House Ballroom - Sturm Und Drang, Trump Hatred, And The Clown Show Of Gossipy Women

Marge Ellen Talbot threw the Washington Post on the table and shouted at her husband, 'Do you know what Trump just did?'. 

By now Harper Talbot was used to his wife's Trump hysteria, so he took another bite of toast, smiled, and waited. 

'The ballroom', she spluttered. 'The White House ballroom.  To get it through Congress he declared it a military facility! Can you imagine?'

Of course he could.  The man - Donald Trump - was a genius at driving the Left completely batshit over nothing, having a gay old time of it, watching their apoplectic Saint Vitus' dances, hip-hopping, flailing, and howling like the demented souls of Bedlam and Broadmoor. 

Harper was amazed that his wife - intelligent, the best schools, professional occupation, responsible mother had been so taken in by Trump's hilarious chicanery. How had she had so completely missed the point and gone so far  'round the bend with a million other middle class matrons over trivialities - the ballroom, the Victory Arch, the Field of American heroes, the Kennedy Center, etc.?

How could anyone not see what this vaudevillian impresario was doing?  He was in his second and last term, a billionaire, happy to retire to Mar-a-Lago and live out his life in luxury, unconcerned about legacy, history, or the yapping, carping street dogs that had pursued him without success for years.  

The Presidency was not exactly the Big Top, but along with reconfiguring foreign policy in a Machiavellian, America-first policy to match the nationalism and realpolitik of Russia and China; along with closing the borders, untethering the private sector from punitive regulations, rolling back woke idiocy, and dismantling the bureaucracy, he was having his jolly way with the Left. 

He loved to watch them squirm, loved to call out the stupidity of media shills at press conferences, and above all loved creating havoc with liberals’ sanctimonious, airy, impossibly foolish agenda.  Quite the guy, thought Harper Talbot. Quite the guy. 

Of course Harper kept all this to himself.  No reason to get into an argument with his wife who, like her colleagues, was fixed in stone when it came to Donald Trump.  Nothing he did, ipso facto, could be right, reasonable, or just.  He was an autocrat, an elitist Wall Street goon, a mountebank, a racist pig. 

Harper Talbot had been married long enough to overlook his wife's growing eccentricities.  They had had a good life together, had produced two children and many grandchildren, so let her rant and rave if it feels good.  

God only knows she wasn't the only one.  All he had to do was walk out the door, greet his neighbors, and get harangued over something that Trump had done.  

Women were the worst - something stuck more chokingly in the female craw than in the male, and these ordinarily sedate and centered women kept trying to cough up the bolus of Trump cat hair day and night. 

What was it about women, Harper wondered?  Why should they be so infected by this virus of insensate hate, this persistent animus, this emotional plague that kept them awake and kept them caterwauling night and day?  How was it that men saw through the Trump charade, the marvelous side show that was his Presidency, the over-the-top hilarity of his barbs, ad hominem arrows, and politically incorrect and rude behavior? 

Of course there were men and plenty of them who opposed Trump policies.  Harper had gone to Yale with a number of former North Shore, Piping Rock conservatives whose heads had been turned by the infamous William Sloane Coffin, Yale Chaplain, civil rights activist and first on the bus to Selma to march with Martin and Ralph.  

Anson White, scion of the White shipping conglomerate, brought up in solid patrician, dutiful patriotic ways, turned against family legacy and rode alongside the Reverend to do the right thing. 

But even he never went into the whirling dervish apoplexy that so characterized Harper's wife and her friends.  He harped on incessantly about the black man, the warming planet, the rights of asylees, the place of women, and the distortions of the capitalist markets, but he left all the rest aside. The ballroom, the arch, the reflecting pool, the gilding of statues were distractions from the real business of the day - radical progressivism. 

'How could he?, Marge Ellen wailed, looking around for something to grab.  She wanted to pick up Aunt Tilly's Victorian cruet - an ugly, ungainly piece that had stood as a centerpiece to the dining table for years - and throw it shattering against the wall.  'That man...we must...he's...', and with that she stormed off to the kitchen where she blew off steam by banging the pots and pans in the drainer. 

Tonight was her bi-weekly political meeting - a group of like-minded women who gathered together to commiserate and consider ways of protest; but it was really little more than a girls' night out, a gossipy affair which rarely got down to business.  

The women bitched all evening, but only with a half-hour before closing time did they get down to Donald Trump, and by then they were all spent what with Betty Helander's drinking problem, Louise Banner's afternoon dalliances, Felicity James' total parking disrespect, and the scrofulous Fletcher twins. 

Harper was no misogynist by any means.  He admired, respected, and loved strong, determined women; and so was initially befuddled and perplexed by their cattiness and gossipy flightiness.  The ballroom?  The arch? In his view, a male view, a subscript in the Trump text perhaps, but nothing more.  

The girls' nights out were what made the whole Trump thing crystal clear.  These women - and here Harper hated to generalize to all women, but again and again during the Trump Derangement Syndrome phase it was women who jumped around like mad chickens.

Women loved to gossip, to find fault, pounce on peccadilloes, to take their pound of flesh in small bites, to nitpick, insinuate, and cavil. Why shouldn't they take this spitefulness to the top?  The ballroom was no different than Hermione Baxter's depression or Randall Ives' run-in with the law. 

So much so that liberal women had become a laughing stock - a caricature, a freak show, a predictably and hilariously unhinged lot of clowns - and they, decked out in warpaint, dyed hair, piercings, and thrift store ensembles, played the part to a 'T'.  

Now, Harper's wife, Marge Ellen had not gone that far, although one day not long ago she and her coffee klatch friends boarded a school bus and went down to the Mall to demonstrate for abortion and against Trump's vile, misogynist, Bible-thumping posturing.  Best left to the younger generation they concluded after a hot, sweaty four hours in the sun; but they had at least put their money where their mouths were. 

When Marge Ellen had come in bedraggled, knackered, and ready to cry, Harper knew that she had overstepped her limits.  Better stick to Trump hatred from Bethesda, couched in girly gossip and righteousness.