Trump likely more interested in putting on a show than he is in governing

Learning Wednesday that President-elect Donald Trump plans to tell us in two weeks about the details of how he will avoid conflict of interest between his new governmental duties and those of his business interests reminds me a bit too much of Dennis Rodman.
 

We'd respect him more if daughter put in charge

Remember the one-time professional basketball star whom we used to think was a tacky jerk, until he became an integral part of the Chicago Bulls’ second streak of three championships in the 1990s?

I REMEMBER THE day in a Chicago newsroom that we got a “tip” – Dennis was going to be married! We were even given a time and place where something would happen. One of those “Be there, or be square” moments.

Sure enough, at the appropriate moment, a limousine showed up. Several voluptuous women dressed in tuxedoes and top hats climbed out – then came the bride. Which turned out to be Dennis himself!

Dressed in a bridal gown (you can make the appropriately tacky joke now about the inappropriateness of Rodman wearing white), the actual “happening” was the publishing of a ghost-written book of Rodman’s memoirs.

Rodman did go on a couple of years later to briefly marry actress Carmen Electra. But the whole thing was a stunt orchestrated by Rodman (who in his own goofy way was a Trump supporter – he also once sang “Happy Birthday” to North Korea leader Kim Jong Un) to gain attention to himself. Nothing more!

WHICH IS WHAT I seriously expect to happen on Dec. 15 when Trump, according to the messages he posts about himself on Twitter, holds a press conference in New York to discuss his business interests.

It was all about selling the books -- which now can be bought at used book stores for $0.50.

If we believe Trump, he has attorneys drafting up “legal documents…which take me completely out of business operations.” He also claims he is “not mandated to do this under the law…” but says he wants to focus on his new presidential title.

“The Presidency is a far more important task!,” Trump writes.

Which, to me, sounds like the early tips we got all those years ago saying that Rodman was about to get married.

NOW IT IS not unheard of for presidents to be people of some significant financial means. The usual method for dealing with this is for the newly-elected public officials to put their assets into a blind trust – by which they surrender control of them for the duration of their time in the White House.

But Trump is an egomaniac (would a sane person feel compelled to name so many projects around the globe after himself) who would never want to surrender control. Which is why I wonder what the scheme will be that he will unveil on Dec. 15 to create the illusion of shifting control over Trump Enterprises.

The early speculation was that Trump’s grown children would wind up assuming greater control – with daughter Ivanka perhaps becoming the new big boss while her father tries not to make a complete mess out of the country.

But does Trump think his kids wouldn’t give him back control of the company once his presidency is complete (a moment that a large share of our society will be anxiously awaiting)? Or is he really more interested in putting on some sort of stunt to assuage his ego – rather than focus on the task at hand.

RICKETTS: Now 'our' man in D.C.?

BECAUSE IF IT were really just about Trump wanting to eliminate the appearance of a conflict of interest, he could issue the statement today. He could take the action, then go about picking the rest of his cabinet officials (with Todd Ricketts of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs now being named as deputy Commerce secretary, is he now the highest-ranking Chicago contact within the White House?) who will advise him in the ways and means of governing.

The delay seems more about staging, just like any agreement he ultimately signs may be something intended to create the appearance of separation while also ensuring he’ll still have control. This is the man, after all, who initially tried arguing that a president cannot have conflicts of interest.

He's back, as an actor. Will Trump return to real estate?

So when Trump, the twit who Tweets, says he’s leaving his businesses “in total,” we shouldn’t presume that he’s backing away from his financial interests any more than Rodman became a happily-married man on that day some two decades ago.

Or any more than one-time California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he said upon his election in 2007 that he’d never appear in a Hollywood film again. Did we really need “Escape Plan” (‘The Terminator’ paired up with ‘Rambo’) or multiple versions of “The Expendables” that have been released since then?

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Bulls can keep their glory, not that they were ever in danger of losing it

It has been some 20 years since that season when the Chicago Bulls managed to set a record 72 victories in the regular season – a record that finally fell this year with the Golden State Warriors (that’s the Oakland, Calif.-area) managing to win 73 games.

 

Fell one win short of ultimate goal

Is it possible that these Warriors are better than the high-and-mighty Bulls teams that we had back in the 1990s – the one time that Chicago sports got to experience a taste of the kind of athletic glamour that New York Yankees fans expect routinely?

NAH!!!

It certainly isn’t going to be remembered as big as those teams led by the duo of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and also had characters like Dennis Rodman (what color would he wear his hair on any given night?) playing regularly.

The Warriors led by Stephen Curry (I have to confess, when I hear the name “Curry” it brings to my mind Eddy, the high school sensation from Thornwood High in South Holland who didn’t quite become the next Bulls superstar) may be able to claim to have won one more game than did those 1995-96 Bulls.

But those Bulls went on to be National Basketball Association champions for that season – and five others within that 1990s decade.

IN THE END, the Warriors fell Sunday night to the Cleveland Cavaliers. History will record these 73-win Warriors as merely a second-best team and NOT champions like the Cavaliers – led by LeBron James, the other high school sensation who turned out to be the elite player that sports fans thought Eddy Curry would be for the Bulls.

 

Still on top of the ultimate champion category

I don’t doubt that Golden State fans feel something special about this season that is now finished. Although I doubt anyone else will get all worked up over it.

For all I know, they will be quickly forgotten while basketball fans will debate for decades to come whether those 1990s Bulls were THE elite team of professional basketball.

That, and they’ll remember how Jordan himself was a Saturday Night Live guest (remember the sight of him in a grass skirt doing the hula dance with the Superfans cheering on his merits (Jordan was almost as sensational as Mike Ditka himself, to listen to those old comedy sketches).

 

Nobody would confuse him with Stephen

ALL OF THIS has come to a wrap-up, and I have to admit to feeling glad – in part because I think the professional basketball season stretches on far too long. It’s even more ridiculous playing NBA Finals games in late June than it is playing the World Series in the days leading up to Halloween.

We can now relegate the Curry Warriors vs. the Jordan Bulls debates to semi-drunken bar quarrels, and wonder how many times in the future the issue will lead to an outburst sensational enough that the cops will have to come in and break things up.

Because it just wasn’t a quarrel I cared to have all that often, and not just because I’m not much of a basketball fan.

Of course, the Chicagoan in me is going to find it difficult to ever have anyone challenge the significance of the Bulls back in that era.

SIX CHAMPIONSHIPS IN an eight-year time span is historic no matter what the sport.

 

One of Chicago's true sports characters

Although others will go on and on about the historic significance of Cleveland managing to come from as far behind as they were in the final round of the NBA Finals to actually win the whole thing.

Some will cry about Stephen Curry’s dream season falling one game short. While those people who think LeBron James is some snotty, arrogant punk will be upset to see him on yet another championship team.

And those of us with a Chicago rooting interest will wind up crying the loudest – wondering why the Bulls stink so much and when it will be their turn to win yet again.

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EXTRA: How about Bob Knight for Prez? Nah, he'd get whomped by Ditka!

I’m not the kind of individual who thinks it’s cute or interesting or in any way appealing for non-political people to start mouthing off about government, something they usually don’t have a clue about!

So the idea that one-time Indiana University basketball coach Bob Knight came out in support of Donald Trump’s presidential aspirations seemed nothing but silly to me.

IN ALL HONESTY, it would have made more sense if Trump, the New York real estate developer nationally reknowned for his garish public behavior, had been on hand to endorse the presidential aspirations of Bobby Knight.

That would make about as much sense, since I suspect Knight is beloved enough amongst the Hoosier crowd that he’d still be the Indiana basketball coach if not for that 2000 incident where he is alleged to have choked one of his ballplayers.

Not that Knight, who called Donald “the best man for the job,” is the first sports celeb to get behind Trump. One-time Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman has backed him publicly.

Let’s also not forget earlier this year when one-time Chicago Bears player and coach Mike Ditka bad-mouthed President Barack Obama and said he’d gladly vote for Trump as his replacement.

PERHAPS WE COULD put some sort of head-to-head battle between Knight and Ditka, to see which one would be a more favorable fantasy candidate for public office.

Knight may well take Indiana’s 11 Electoral College votes.

Yet I somehow suspect that “Da Coach” would clean Bobby’s clock – much to the disgust of those of us who prefer to take this presidential election process seriously.

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Will Hef make it to the altar?

I’m not about to mercilessly mock Hugh Hefner for getting engaged yet again, even though a part of me isn’t sure this stunt is something real.

For one thing, the founder of Playboy magazine and all its business offshoots is of an age where I seriously have to wonder if he’ll make it long enough to have a wedding. Unless the engagement that was announced on Christmas Day (via Twitter, by Hefner himself) is going to result in a quickie wedding.

NEW YEAR’S EVE in LasVegas? Hefner could be wed by an Elvis lookalike, with a Wayne Newton impersonator standing in as the “best man.”

If you think that image is a bit cheesy, I’d say it is totally in character with the event itself.

For what we have here is an 84-year-old man deciding that his current female partner in life ought to become his legal wife.

People all over the Internet have been making snide comments about the age difference (such as how he’s old enough to be her great-grandfather, or one person who wrote on their own Twitter account “Does Hugh Hefner realize that his fiancé was younger when ‘Schindler’s List’ came out than he was when Schindler’s actual list came out?”

PERSONALLY, I SAY that if Hefner can actually attract women that much younger than himself and they both want to go along with this, then why not? It’s their life.



If it turns out that Hefner’s bride-to-be (who would be his third wife, intermixed with many thousands of girlfriends, mistresses and one-night-stands throughout the decades) winds up somehow taking the company for some sort of serious financial settlement in the future, then that is Playboy Enterprises’ dumb luck.



Hugh Hefner's latest "fiance" wasn't even alive when the ultimate underage girlfriend ruled the Playboy roost.



For all we know, we could someday see a court battle right here in Chicago to try to undo such an act (Hefner daughter Christie, along with husband – and former state legislator William Marovitz – both are Chicago residents). Such a trial could very well get screwier than the legal hijinks we saw last summer in U.S. District Court when former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was on trial.

The reason I’m finding this “story” so laughable is that a part of me really feels like it’s somehow a fix. A stunt, meant to draw attention to Hefner or Playboy, the company.

THE IDEA THAT Hefner feels the need to have a legal wife at this stage in his life feels almost like the time that then-Chicago Bull Dennis Rodman let it be known he would be involved in a wedding. Sure enough, at the appointed time and place, he showed up wearing a wedding gown. It was all a stunt to promote his attempt at autobiography.

Then again, Rodman was once married to the actress Carmen Electra. So I guess anything is possible.

One part of this saga amuses me – the age of the bride. Just about any account of Hefner’s life will recall his relationship back in the 1970s with aspiring actress/singer/model Barbi Benton, whom he supposedly started dating when he was in his early 40s and she was 18.

She supposedly told Hefner she had never dated anyone in her life older than 24, to which Hefner is famously said to have replied, “Neither have I.”

IT SEEMS THAT some things don’t change. For the “bride-to-be” is, depending on which source one wants to check, either 23 or 24. Perhaps Hefner is maturing in his old age? Just a few years ago, any woman trying to gain the magazine publisher’s attention would likely have been about 19.

If Hefner really wanted to scandalize us, he’d get himself engaged to an 18-year-old. Then, we’d find out in the days after the wedding that she had lied about her age and was perhaps only 17.

Just picture the image of the police being called out to the Playboy Mansion. Underage girls! Hef taken away for possible prosecution! Let’s not forget that Cook County officials once tried to prosecute Hefner and Playboy when one of its girls turned out to have fudged her age upward a few months to appear to be 18. It could be a case of, “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

So what should we truly think about the fact that Chicago native (who hasn’t actually lived among us since before the Days of Disco) feels the need to take on another wife – one who happens to be six decades younger than himself? I haven’t named her in this commentary, mainly because I can’t tell any of the Hefner women of recent decades apart – they all fit that generic bleached blonde look. The only one that had any real personality of her own was the one who later married a football player now with the Indianapolis Colts.

IT STRIKES ME as being more trivia that got attention beyond its significance because it became known on a slow (the Christmas holiday weekend) news day. I’m sure there are people who give it extra credence because it was initially learned about through Tweeter – although I consider that to be a source of trivial blather (Did we really need to know that the Sunday night movie shown at the Playboy Mansion is “The Fighter”)?

If anything, what shocks me the most about this whole thing is that it makes me realize how long the whole Hefner persona has been with us. After all, the original ultimate underage Hef girlfriend was Benton herself, who next month will turn 61.

Now, the two would be the perfect pair age-wise. The only scandal would be that Hef was messing with a married woman. Then again, that would fit the Playboy image of old just as well.

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