AS a student I had the chance to travel across America. It was a revealing trip which took me from the metropolis of New York to the backwaters of the Ozarks in Tennessee and from the industrial wastelands of Ohio to the Tex-Mex border.
The further south and west one travelled the true diversity of the real America came into full technicolour.
Most Irish gravitate towards the big eastern cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh so going deep into redneck and blue collar country was somewhat unnerving.
A few years later whilst working in a communications company in Washington DC, I was sent into the deep south to help make some campaign ads for a Democratic congressman who was also at the time the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Congressman Anthony was a giant of a gentleman.
Truly all American. His district included two towns which left an indelible mark in my memory- one was Prescott, Arkansas (population 3500) which had an annual Chicken and Egg Festival.
All the local dignitaries debated publicly which came first – the chicken or the egg? And children rather ominously ate KFC burgers in one hand whilst without any irony carrying furry yellow live chicks in KFC boxes in the other.
Somehow it’s not quite the same at Glenties Summer School. The other place was Dumas - population 4,500.
We recorded its festival of Ding Dong Days based on a 1920’s song. Dumas Ding Dong Festival holds such events as the Methodist Men’s Pancake breakfast; the Daughters of Charity 5k, the crowning of the Ding Dong Daddy and Mama of Dumas and of course the Ding Dong Eating competition.
There was even a three fingered sheriff called Homer. World affairs, global hunger and the latest Dali exhibitions at the MOMA were not amongst the regular topics of discussion in either Dumas or Prescott. It seemed that only food which could be fried, barbecued or shot ever saw a plate.
But this was more America than the America we see through the lens of NYC or LA. The ad we produced for Congressman Anthony could have come straight from a scene in the Waltons.
In fact, it may have even featured a local John Boy and Mary-Ellen. It was pure American schmaltz served up with a syrupy dollop of motherhood, apple pie and a log cabin to boot.
If I recall correctly both my boss and Congressman Anthony loved the final cut. He certainly sailed through re-election.
Watching the Republican National Convention or more appropriately the Trump Pageant in Cleveland I was struck by the cowboy clad rednecks and buffalo wing eating mamas from all the other Dumas and Prescott’s across middle America.
I wasn’t surprised, these people probably love the Waltons, John Wayne movies, the National Rifle Association (NRA), Fox News and Homer Simpson. But they are less the Brady bunch and more like Quantrill’s riders or a Boot Hill lynching mob.
Donald Trump, the narcissistic, misogynistic and egotistical maniac has taken the party of Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan and turned it into the political equivalent of Barnum and Bailey’s Oddment Emporium replete with phoney monsters, oddball assortment of barmy republicans, Barbie-like wife and Stepford children.
Trump has not only debased the great bastion of world democracy, he has cheapened it and poisoned it. Trump mania is all about Trump the brand – winning the presidency in some ways is second base for him.
And he is not just poisoning the American political system but he’s pouring bile into it by encouraging unbridled hatred against the Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton.
And it seems that Governor Christie, like any good sidekick, is only too happy to play Muttley to Trump’s Dick Dastardly.
That Trump could become president of the USA is the world’s nightmare come true. Putin in the Kremlin and Trump in the White House just doesn’t bear thinking about.
Trump has taken public anger and made it into a political art-form. His appeal is more based on a reality TV show than realpolitik, however there is no doubting he is a formidable force.
Clinton is going to have to work hard to convince Americans that they deserve better than the yellow pack future offered by Donald Trump.
To do that she is going to have to appeal to all those Ding Dong Daddies and Mamas across middle America.
Let us see if - as the song says - she can strut her stuff.
