Summer Rerun - Not a Chance

Being There Now

Nowhere in particular
August 20, 2017

The main character in Jerzy Kosisnky’s 1970 novel Being There was named Chauncey Gardener.  He was affectionately called Chance. Chance was a gardener. He grew up and then remained in the household of his wealthy employer, and had no exposure to the outside world with the exception of the substantial amount of time he spent watching television. Chance was evicted after his benefactor died. All he knew of life came from watching TV. Sound familiar?

Peter Sellers masterfully portrayed Chance in the 1979 movie based on and named for the book. Everyone who meets him, including the president, interprets Chance’s gardening-based utterances as profound philosophical life lessons. The movie ends with high-level movers and shakers deciding that Chance is the only man they could back as the next president, convinced that his lack of personal history, his down-home “wisdom” and lack of political experience would be tremendous assets for getting him into the White House. Sound familiar?

The main difference of course between Chance and the person we are currently all still forced to be thinking of, the man we cannot stop thinking of as hard as we might try, is that Chance was a pure innocent. There was no pretense to him. He was what he claimed to be – a gardener. He did not know how to read. When asked what he read, he would answer honestly as always, “I like to watch TV.” People read into that what they wanted. Chance understood nothing of the world he lived in. And Chance had absolutely no interest in being famous, unlike his real-life doppelganger, who wants attention, fame and adoration above all else…with the possible exception of the ability to maintain a candy-corn-colored hair-like substance atop his empty cranium.

Being Chrump

Chance’s evil twin – No-Chance – demonstrates a complete absence of innocence. He is 100% artifice. From his fake wealth, to his fake words, to his fake hair and hue. Like Chance though, he knows only what he gathers from television (and the occasional intellectually disabled conspiracy addict). He has no idea how any of it applies to real life. He has no interest in real life. He has never had to. He never had a real job, grew up in the house of a wealthy man – except while sequestered at a military academy, due to his utter lack of ability to have non-sociopathic interactions with other humans. He was a bad seed, now grown into a fatally-diseased plant, sowing its seeds to the four winds with wreck-ful abandon.

It is long past time that everyone ridicule everything this so-called alt-president says. Every. Single. Word.

Anyway, the picture below was meant to be worth a thousand words. Apparently, it was only worth about 450.

“I like to be watched on TV.”

I. Mangrey reporting. I’m getting sick of watching.