They take some getting used to!
How New Yorkers see the United States.
If three New Yorkers enter a taxi without arguing, a bank has been robbed.
Phyllis Diller, New Yorker.
“Why does a woman work ten years to change a man, then complain he’s not the man she married?” ― Barbra Streisand, New Yorker
In 1965 I went to college—University of Wisconsin-Madison. The UW, to further integration (this was 1965, don’t forget) assigned dormitory rooms as best they could to integrate the regions (not the races. Remember, in 1965, northerners weren’t racist). So Michael Fredenthal (son of artist, David Fredenthal)–east coast, cosmopolitan and Jewish–became my roommate. He yearned to be me; i.e. salt of the earth, real and genuine (?); I yearned to be him, i.e., sophisticated, worldly, European. We traded my worn blue-jeans (three pair) for his tweed double-breasted suits (two).
Michael’s New Yorker friends dropped by the room. Visualize six nineteen-year-old Donald Trumps—argumentative, confrontational, rude, crude and smoking Old Gold cigarettes—who attended the UW because the Ivy League schools had a Jewish quota. I—non-smoking, non-drinking Wisconsin-polite farm boy—was at the UW to play football.
We came near to blows. I took exception to their descriptions of my sisters’ virtue, mother’s cooking, and Madison’s yokel ways.
Well, I came near to blows. They were confused, surprised, apologetic. “Hey, this is dinner table conversation in The Bronx. You want a cigarette? You want we talk about the Leibowitzers?’
This is my conclusion based upon my life experience: New Yorkers are aggressive, confrontational, insulting, abusive (and loud) in the kindest way possible, a disagreeableness, I suspect, inculcated from their mother’s milk (or Similac :-)]. In summary…
I’ve dated New Yorkers. I have New Yorkers friends. I lived with New Yorkers. I’ve worked for New Yorkers. New Yorkers have worked for me.
I married aNew Yorker!
However, they, I’ll admit, do take some getting used to.
However, they, I’ll admit, take some getting used to.
And then there is Donald Trump
Why does Donald Trump inspires loathing among the American artist-actor-academic-newsroom (and wannabe) demographic? Yes, he is a brash and opinionated. Yes, he is a rude, crude, aggressive and insulting, deeply opinionated argumentative loud mouth.
But why this loathing? Because he’s a New Yorker? Does the New York intelligentsia—academics, columnists and reporters plus wannabes—see in Donald Trump a reminder–father, sister, or OMG! that image in the mirror?Self-loathing, perhaps?
Donald Trump, I would guess, may be more New Yorker than the average New Yorker;
Donald Trump is neither Hitler, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung nor anyone’s fool.
But yes, he takes some getting used to.
In France, elections are multiple-choice; US elections are binary. It’s either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. In France, the smoke-filled rooms occur after the election; in the United States, it’s before.
