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Trump – Short Fingered Vulgarian – Jerry Schwartz Associated Press 21 Feb 1989
Source: The
Recorder, Greenfield Mass, Tuesday, February 21, 1989
Donald Trump: hero or a 'short-fingered vulgarian'?
By JERRY SCHWARTZ
Associated Press
NEW YORK —
Donald Trump can
buy hotels, he
can buy
football teams, he can buy
casinos and air-
lines.
But he can't buy
respect.
Spy magazine
calls him a
"short-fingered vulgari-
an." Cartoonist
Berke Breathed takes
Trump's brain
and installs
it in the
skull of Bill
the Cat, the
foul fe-
line of
"Bloom County," A
Daily News columnist
writes that
when she needs
cheering up, she
watches
"Donald Trump do
something silly."
The Stand
Up New York
comedy club devoted a
night to
ridiculing Trump. For
two hours, comics
drew laughter
with readings from
"Trump: The Art
of the
Deal" and took
their own potshots
— suggest-
ing, for example, that
he bought a Parisian landmark
and renamed it the "Arc de Trump."
The 43-year-old
billionaire does not
believe he de-
serves this
tidal wave of
derision, which rises
along
with its
success and prominence. But Trump — who
declined to be
interviewed — thinks he understands it.
"Those Who don't
like me don't know
me, and have
never met me," he told
Time magazine. "My
guess is
that they dislike me
out of jealousy."
Not so, say Trump's detractors.
They dislike him
on merits.
"He's just an
everyday slob with
too much money,
he just doesn't
have enough taste to keep
his name
off of things,"
said Breathed.
The sequence
about Trump's transplanted
cere-
brum, Breathed
said, is born
of his conviction
that
Trump "looks
too smooth and polished on the
outside,
he should look like
Bill the Cat.
Trump is
no stranger to
the funny pages,
he also
appeared within
the past year
in "Doonesbury." Gar-
ry Trudeau
showed Trump tossing
casino chips from
the deck
of his 282-foot yacht,
the Trump Princess, to
small boats
below. This obviously was
not the "quali-
ty" jmage Trump
wants to project.
"I did pretty
well in school, but for the
life of me, I
really can’t understand
what 'Doonesbury' is
about."
Trump has
said. He suggested Trudeau’s
wife, televi-
sion's Jane
Pauley, "has a lot more
talent than he
does."
Critics have found fault with
Trump's taste. When
he announced last month that he
intended to close
that Plaza Hotel landmark of
bogus Hawaiiana, Trader
Vic's — a closing that he delayed
when the threat
of the bar's demise improved
business — Trump said
he was doing so not because of
any hostility to Samoan
Fog Cutters and similar drinks,
but because the
bar was tacky.
"Wildly tacky,"
riposted Village Voice reporter
Guy Trebay, "is TrumpTower
with its mean escalators
and pink marble vastness. Does
Donald Trump
think a waterfall wall is the
acme of subtle design?"
Critics have found fault with
Trump’s ego and penchant
for self-promotion. Daily News
columnist Gail
Collins, writing about a new
board game based on
Trump's wheeling and dealing,
noted that "Trump —
The Game" contained "approximately nine million
photos of Donald Trump.
The game is meant "for
players 12 and up, and I
suppose there could be worse
things to give to your
12-year old than a game that
encourages him to act like
Donald Trump. 'Uzi: The Crack
Dealer,' for example,"
she mused.
she mused.
Critics have found fault with
Trump's dedication to
building glitzy buildings in a
city where homelessness
-and poverty are endemic. One
group staged a brunch
for the homeless this month in
front of the Plaza,
along with a "public
shaming" of its owner. Trump
did not attend.
But the reigning champion of
Trump bashers is
Spy, a New York satire magazine,
and Trump has reacted
with irritation and vitriol.
In September. Trump claimed Spy
was in dire
straits and would be out of
business within a year,
now each issue contains a
countdown of “our death
foretold. Last week, an outraged
Trump claimed
that the father of a Spy
executive had suggested Spy
would ease up on Trump if the
Trump Shuttle offered
the magazine to passengers; Spy said this was a joke.
The irreverent and irascible
magazine is fixated on
The Big T – on the “eerily stiff
hairdo” of Trump’s
wife, Ivana; on Trump himself,
who was mentioned
derogatorily in all 10 issues
last year and whose picture
was compared in the March issue
with the first
police sketch of Son of Sam.
Each year Spy lists the 100 most
annoying people,
places and things in New York.
One year, Trump was
No. 1; one year, he was No. 3.
Last year, he was Nos.
10, 14, 21, 26 and 30,
subdivided into Donald Trump,
Candidate; Donald Trump,
Acquirer; Donald Trump.
Boxing Promoter; Donald Trump,
Author, and Don
aid Trump, Fixer of Things We'd
Almost Rather
Leave Broken.
“We don’t hate him, we despise
him,” Spy said this
month.
But why?
"He's ... sort of a
polyester guy in a 100 percent cotton
world," froths Editor E.
Graydon Carter. "He
represents a sort of
mass-market, fake sophistication.
In a city that invented real
sophistication, his kind is
driving the real stuff out."
Carter is just warming up. He
dismisses Trump as
"sort of show-and-tell
child" who insists on splattering
his name everywhere he goes.
Carter knows that Trump has
become a celebrity —
his face on the covers of news
magazines, his book a
bestseller. To some, he is a
capitalist hero.
"The folks who watch
motivational cable shows
late at night — to them he's a
hero," Carter said, "To
anybody who cares about New
York, who doesn't like
brass, he's no hero."
.
brass, he's no hero."
.
.
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