So here we are.
And where the hell are we?
And who is gonna resolve America’s identity crisis?
In 2016, I covered the Republican National Convention in Cleveland that nominated Donald J. Trump for president.
It was quite a wigwam. Former New York Gov. Rudy Giuliani was still in his prime as a top Trump adviser; wife Melania Trump actually took to the RNC stage to promote her husband; RNC Trump adviser Paul Manafort, who is now out of jail, was strutting his stuff; and Trump kid/adviser Corey Lewandowski had just been blasted by Ivanka Trump and her hubby as an untrustworthy jerk.
On Thursday night at the RNC center in Milwaukee, Giuliani was gone; Lewandowski was under the radar; Manafort just stopped by to say hi; Melania did not give a convention speech; and the word “God” became a common convention pronoun in the “nominative” case, if you get my drift.
The RNC’s biblical banter reminded me of the late conservative Chicago radio show host Paul “Hello, Americans” Harvey, who referred to God many times to an audience of 24 million listeners decades ago before signing off “Good day!”
When I was a high school sophomore in the late 1950s, I was driven home for lunch every day by our next-door neighbor, the school’s football coach. Five days a week, without fail, Coach Bill Hart would tune in at noon to catch broadcaster Paul Harvey on the car radio.
"What a voice! What a delivery,” Coach Hart would boom.
Paul Harvey, who later specialized in retelling historic tall tales ending with “and now you know ... the rest of the story,” was mesmerizing even to this 13-year-old.
His nationally syndicated radio show, which began in 1951, would often made references to God and the decline of American moralism. People trusted what Harvey was telling, so they trusted what he was selling, commentators said.
In November 1978, Harvey gave an electrifying speech to the Future Farmers of America titled “So God made a farmer,” describing how God would create the earth’s caretaker.
Here's an excerpt of Harvey’s “Genesis creation” narration as “God.”
“We need somebody willing to get up before dawn, milk cows, work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper, then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.
“We need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle a calf and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild. Somebody to call hogs, tame cantankerous machinery, shape an ax handle from a persimmon shoot, shoe a horse with a chunk of car tires.
“We need somebody willing to ride the ruts at double speed to get the hay in before the rain clouds, be somebody strong enough to clear trees, yet gentle enough to tame lambs and wean pigs. Someone to plow deep and not cut corners. Somebody to seed weed, feed, breed and rake."
It begged a comparison to Trump’s rambling off-the-cuff dissertation Thursday on how, “saved by God from the assassin’s bullet,” he’d “Make America First Again" during his 132-minute presidential nominee acceptance speech at the GOP national convention in Milwaukee.
In the speech, as America’s caretaker, Trump said he would unite the nation once again under God, not spend money on any “new green scam idea,” bring back car manufacturing, not let other countries plunder our nation, make inflation vanish, find cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease and build an iron dome and a missile defense system to protect our nation.
Trump also noted his aims to: stop women playing in men’s sports; produce massive amounts of “drill, baby, drill” energy; bring back patriotism to schools; stop our planet from teetering on the edge of World War III; restore peace and harmony to the world; stop the illegal “alien” immigration from killing hundreds and thousands of people; and "finish building the border wall.”
The kicker?
In 2013, Harvey’s legendary “So God made a farmer” speech became so famous it starred in a popular Super Bowl commercial for a Dodge Ram truck.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also used Harvey's speech in a campaign pitch to become a “caretaker" for his state.
And now America waits for the election to see if trust in the “telling” is worth the “selling.”
Bear Facts: The brilliant Chicago-based restaurant series “The Bear,” co-produced by a dear friend, Carrie Holt DaLama, won a record 23 Emmy nominations for a comedy, but comedy is such a small part of its brilliance. … Saturday birthdays: Carlos Santana, 77, actor Omar Epps, 51, model Gisele Bundchen, 44. … Sunday birthdays: actor Josh Hartnett, 46, John Lovitz, 67, cartoonist Gary Trudeau, 76, and singer Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens), 76.
