Making a play for Trumps

A new series on anything that's something to talk about

by

Sushmita Bose

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Published: Fri 21 Oct 2016, 12:00 AM

Last updated: Fri 28 Oct 2016, 11:11 AM

Last week, there was a Facebook Live session at the Khaleej Times office. Five women - I don't know whether they were cherry-picked or random choices, but I happened to be one of them - were asked to "discuss and debate" the Hillary Clinton vs Donald Trump face-off. The female perspective, please. The context? How Trump, or Drumpf (as many would have it), has managed to outrage all rational women - not just in the US of A, but the world over - with his "misogynism". For instance, at a news conference sometime this year, he'd bragged: "Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5 per cent of the vote. The only thing she's got going is the woman's card." Then, there have been all those reports about inappropriate touching (which, frankly, I find a bit trumped-up: why wait till the eve of the elections to suddenly emerge out of the woodwork? Why not file a sexual harassment case the moment it happened?). And a whole lot of other creepy, delusional stuff.
Initially, I'd wanted out of the Facebook Live session. I'm not really interested in, and therefore don't follow, politics - unless it's Indian politics, but even that's on a selective basis; plus, I'm not exactly agog about the American electoral climate - it all seems to be warming up too far, far away.
"Let's get somebody (on air) who genuinely cares about this Donald vs Hillary thingie," I offered.
Didn't go down so well, so I decided to do the next best thing: ruffle a few feathers.
"Instead of noisily labelling Trump a philanderer," I started, "let's focus on why Hillary pandered to the stereotype of the Good Wife by not walking out on her heavily-philandering [past-present continuous] husband."
To that, one of my colleagues said something that made me sit up quite straight (I was earlier slouching on the rightmost side of the sofa, slimily trying to bite into a biscuit, hoping the act wouldn't be caught on camera). "It was a calculated move: Hillary didn't walk out on Bill because she's always been a very ambitious woman, and she knew back then she would run for the US presidency some day in the future. and she was smart enough to realise that she wouldn't become President if she was a divorced woman - conservative parts of America would never vote for a woman who's separated/divorced," she rattled off in one breath.
"Isn't Trump divorced a few times as well?" I wanted to know but didn't vocalise. Because I knew the answer: "Yes. But he's a man."
We moved on to dissecting Trump saying he would have dated Ivanka if she hadn't been his daughter, but I couldn't help wondering whether or not Hillary's "calculated move" was not misogynistic as well.
A friend, who lives in a Texan suburb and hates Trump, posts at least 10 times daily on some Drumpf idiocy or the other. While I fail to identify with her passion, I admire her sense of unflagging purpose. One of her latest posts, one on whose thread I was inspired enough to actually leave a comment, had to do with a right-wing pastor, in Ohio, quoting the scriptures in a ludicrous attempt to bat for Trump. My comment ('liked' by many, I gleefully noted): "This is brilliant! Must hand it to Donald Duck, this has been the most entertaining show on earth... Even I'm somewhat interested in elections suddenly - that too in a country I have no particular truck with [except Hollywood]."
Another friend who lives in McLean, Virginia, has been posting photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who other than being eye candy also breaks into impromptu Bollywood-style dances. "This is the kind of cool guy I want as my leader. Hell, not Trump.#ThinkingOfMovingToCanada" - this was her Facebook photo caption a few days ago.  
The Texan suburb friend WhatsApped me last week, wanting to know if I could get her in touch with head-hunters either in India or the UAE. "I won't be able to live in America if Trump comes to power. And I hate it that folks in Texas love him."
"How do you care if your neighbours love or hate Trump?" I replied. "Get a life, woman. And why can't you live in America if Trump comes to power? If he's so bad, he can be impeached, no? Remember how Frank Underwood got rid of Garrett Walker in House of Cards? I mean, not that Walker was bad, but you know."
"Nah, I hate him because he hates women. Donald Trump, my dear girl, is a misogynist: do you have any idea what that means?"
sushmita@khaleejtimes.com