Overcomber Don's misspelling is what I might in my elevated patrician way call "Jacksonian." This is not because Jackson's spelling was famously bad –– although it was –– see Allen Walker Read's excellent "Could Andrew Jackson Spell?" in American Speech 38 (1963) – but because in the era of Jackson the common man (that log cabin hard cider crass asshole) was for the first time celebrated in popular literature, often in the guise of the misspelling, vulgar hick.
Hosts of hack writers in the 1830s would write newspaper squibs about rural protagonists, country confidence men or village psychotics selling tin and paper wares, going to the city or the centre of government to bring their style of "savvy" to elite politicians. It might be Albany, it might be Washington. The joke remained the same, rus in urbe.
He might not be from the country exactly, but he pretends like he's friends to the rural dwellers in Kaintuck and Mizzuruh, and Trump being a vulgar interloper (nearly wrote intercomber) from Queens or was it the Bronx was always shut out of the aristocracy of Old New York.
Oh boo hoo.
Trump's allegations of Obama trying to "tapp" his phones at Trump Tower was in this Jack Downing, Sut Lovingood, Birdofredum Sawin vein. White trash attacking men of colour out of contumely. Maybe you've read Matthew Whittier's "Ethan Spike" pro–abolitionism letters out of Portland Maine? Probably you haven't. Or Lowell's Biglow Papers. Probably not as I said.
Trump's peculiar spelling –– his interesting grammar. His routine manner of lying. His back-country scrabbling around. His fucked up way of thinking and acting and doing!
O for a Lowell today.
O for an Artemus Ward!
Sometimes I wonder what Pound would have made of Trump. He used to have a weak spot for demagogues as we know.
New "phunny phellow" name for the Pres: "Donald Tapp".
"Tapp – tapp – tapping on Tosspot's wig."
"Tapper Don." Instead of "Trapper John" from out of M.A.S.H.
"B.J. Honeycutt."
"B.J. Wiretapp" from S.M.U.S.H.
"Blow Job Wire Tapp, Agent of H.Y.D.R.A."
"Doctor Mindcomber, Agent of COBRA."
Write in today and say which you think is the best new name for our glorious 45th illustrious President.
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