Last Thursday, February 4, the United States suffered 5,077 Covid-19 fatalities. This was the largest single-day death toll thus far. Although diagnoses of infection have been falling, deaths (which usually lag by a couple of weeks) have not.
Today, February 11, the death statistics again appear to be broaching record territory. I will hold off on commenting about what this implies until final tallies have been recorded and examined.
Also last Thursday, Donald Trump submitted a letter to the Screen Actors Guild. Evidently he had learned that he was about to be booted from the union, and in his never-ending quest to disallow anyone from dissing him first, he decided to attempt an "I'm breaking up with you first" bit of publicity.
This was the former president of the United States, on a day he knew was the worst of the pandemic, spending time and energy to play spin-master with the Screen Actors Guild. His sense of priorities, his lack of empathy or solemnity for the raw awfulness of the moment, his usual self-absorption and anesthetized sensibilities, were all on display. I present the letter verbatim, so readers can share in the insulated and unintentionally comical wonder that is Donald J. Trump, the 45th president of the United States.
"Ms. Carteris:
I write to you today regarding the so-called Disciplinary Committee hearing aimed at revoking my union membership. Who cares!
While I'm not familiar with your work, I'm very proud of my work on movies such as Home Alone 2, Zoolander and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; and television shows including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Saturday Night Live and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, The Apprentice -- to name just a few!
I've also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others.
Which brings me to your blatant attempt at free media attention to distract from your dismal record as a union. Your organization has done little for its members, and nothing for me -- besides collecting dues and promoting dangerous un-American policies and ideas -- as evident by your massive unemployment rates and lawsuits from celebrated actors, who even recorded a video asking, "Why isn't the union fighting for me?"
These, however, are policy failures. Your disciplinary failures are even more egregious.
I no longer wish to be associated with your union.
As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done nothing for me."
I had a difficult time, reading this letter the first time, believing that Trump had actually written it. It sounded like something The Onion might have put out there in cyber space as a skewering dig. But no, the former American president wrote it, and then sent it on the day of the worst death toll from the pandemic.
More than 70 million Americans voted for this man. The wonder and horror of that fact never grows old. It is a bit jarring to realize, at the age of 63, that one has spent the entirety of life in The Asylum. I'm not sure that I prefer having been stupidly unaware of my bunkmates' psychiatric issues to actually being one of the mentally challenged, but one thing is certain. I still have much to learn, even in The Asylum.
Bob Dietz
February 11, 2021
