As you all well know, my wife often referred to me as a curmudgeon. A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend and he mentioned that Claire sometimes called me a curmudgeon. He asked if there were any famous curmudgeons. I assumed he meant any besides me, but I came up with W.C. Fields, who is maybe the most famous, as well as the Muppets’ Statier and Waldorf (the guys in the balcony,) Lucy from the Peanuts comic strip and maybe Andy Rooney.
My friend asked if I didn’t think Donald Trump was maybe a curmudgeon.
The short answer is no. He is bad tempered, but he doesn’t fit the curmudgeon mold. He daydreams or imagines universal adulation and gets ticked off that he doesn’t get it. He fantasizes about making America great again and energizing his base. But a real curmudgeon doesn’t care one bit whether or not people like him — he’s too old for all that nonsense, and — his knees hurt. A curmudgeon doesn’t think he can change the world — he only tries to slow down the pace in which it seems to be going to hell.
So Trump may be incompetent, arrogant, an idiot, egoistical, ignorant, a racist, and narcissistic — but — he’s not a curmudgeon.
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