He Finally Got to Play The Garden

He Didn't Have to Sing a Single Note or Make a Simple Basket. All He Had to Do Was Hate. And Bore People to Death.

Long lines of supporters waited to enter the rally earlier on Sunday.

Three days ago, this past Sunday, a New York City boy’s dream finally came true. He had always wanted to “Play the Garden.” Madison Square Garden. The Greatest Arena in the World. Numerous Presidents and world leaders had played the Garden. The Pope had played the Garden. Muhammad Ali played the Garden. The New York Liberty had once played the Garden. The Stones played the Garden. As did Public Enemy and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez and Bruce and each of the Beatles individually along with Ravi Shankar and Madonna and Beyoncé and George Carlin, not to mention Michael Jordan and Wayne Gretzky. All the Greats have played the Garden — but one. In HIS mind life would not be complete unless he too, little Donnie from Wareham Place in Jamaica Estates, Queens, played the Garden.

Except he couldn’t sing a single note. He could not make a simple basket. He never saw a puck because his brain didn’t have the facility of following something moving that fast. He had not a singular coherent thought in his head, totally bereft of an idea, any idea, and unless people were talking about him, they weren’t talking. His vocabulary was so limited that the only word that readily entered his mind was “me.” Or rather, “ME.” And there was also ME, ME, MINE, I, THE DONALD, mememememememememememememememe…

He had no talent, zero, which was strange for a human because all of us can do something — sing a lullaby to our baby, hum a tune, whistle, read a book, snap a picture, repeat the alphabet, find the North Pole on a globe. 

To be fair, it’s not that he couldn’t do anything. He could tell a good lie and pass a lie detector test while doing it — and he could convince 74 million people that the lie was true! That is no easy feat! Some would say that takes a certain level of genius. He could look directly into a solar eclipse and not go blind! So he must’ve had some superpowers. He knew how to cheat and break the law and get away with it and never spend ten seconds in handcuffs or a single night in jail.

But these are not the talents that get you booked to Play the Garden. And so he never played the Garden. 

Until this week — when he bought it out for one night by shelling out untold millions of dollars. NOW he could play the Garden. 

As he stood in the wings backstage at Madison Square Garden, looking out at the thousands adorned in red hats and hate, this sacred arena with each section and level bathed separately in lights of red, white and blue — 20,000 of his fellow Americans who had waited patiently for hours, clambering and craning just to catch a glimpse of him, salivating to drink up his every last boast — he must have marveled at how this 820,000 square-foot echo chamber could hold so much love for him. 

Of course when you’ve lived your life in a bubble, a bubble that you built, perhaps the only thing you’ve ever truly “built,” you must have felt pretty safe (even if your wife did avoid your lips as you went in for her kiss on the stage, she, so deftly performing her own Butler move as she ever so slightly turned her head barely an inch to avoid the incoming scoundrel pretending to love her).

The audience was in its own bubble, and inside it they, too, were all safe. Safe to hate “the other.“ Safe to cheer the Vice President being called a whore with “pimps,” “the Anti-Christ,” “the first Samoan-Malaysian with a low-IQ to run for President.” The mostly white male crowd was safe to relish in their superiority without consequence — at least for another 10 days until the majority of the American People who believe in reproductive rights (70%), banning assault weapons (67%), doubling or tripling the minimum wage (74%), saving the planet’s environment (70%), providing paid family leave for everyone (79%), stopping any plan to mass deport millions of brown people (62%) and finally taxing the rich until they squeal like pigs (79%) have their say. That’s what’s going to happen next week. They know it and Trump knows it. 

But at least he got to Play with himself and his demented cult at the Garden for six, long, excruciatingly narcissistic, sociopathic, mind-bending hours.

Even Billy Joel could never pull that off at the Garden.

(In the days after the Night at the Garden, there were three moments on TV that I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss. Here they are:)

1. Katy Tur on MSNBC:

2. Ana Navarro on ABC’s The View:

3. Mehdi Hasan on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip:

“It’s hard to free fools from the chains they revere.”

~Voltaire

Photos: Facebook; Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

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