Tom Engelhardt 327

July 16, 2020 

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Donald J. Trump, or Osama bin Laden's Revenge

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“The Bleeding Wound” 
Osama bin Laden Won (Twice) 
By Tom Engelhardt

It’s July 2020 and I’m about to turn 76, which, as far as I’m concerned, officially makes me an old man. So put up with my aging, wandering brain here, since (I swear) I wasn’t going to start this piece with Donald J. Trump, no matter his latest wild claims or bizarre statements, increasingly white nationalist and pro-Confederate positions (right down to the saving of the rebel stars and bars), not to speak of the Covid-19 slaughter of Americans he’s helped facilitate. But then I read about his demand for a “National Garden of American Heroes,” described as “a vast outdoor park that will feature the statues of the greatest Americans to ever live” and, honestly, though this piece is officially about something else, I just can’t help myself. I had to start there.

Yes, everyone undoubtedly understands why General George Patton (a Trump obsession) is to be in that garden, not to speak -- given the president’s reelection politics -- of evangelist Billy Graham, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and former president Ronald Reagan. Still, my guess is that most of you won’t have the faintest idea why Davy Crockett is included. I'm talking about the frontiersman and Indian killer who died at the Alamo. Given my age, though, I get Donald Trump on this one and it gave me a rare laugh in a distinctly grim moment. That’s why I can’t resist explaining it, even though I guarantee you that the real subject of this piece is Osama bin Laden’s revenge.

After all, The Donald and I grew up in the 1950s in different parts of the same bustling city, New York. We both had TVs, just then flooding into homes nationwide, and I guarantee you that we both were riveted by the same hit show, TV’s first mini-series, Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, starring the actor Fess Parker. It’s pop theme song swept the country. (“Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free... Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three... Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier.”) The show also launched a kids’ craze for coonskin caps. (Who among us didn’t have, or at least yearn, for one?) So how could a statue of Fess Parker not be in the Garden of American Heroes?

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