Thursday
Having reread Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the first time in 50 years (see yesterday’s post on the play), I now have a work that helps explain the GOP’s abject capitulation to Donald Trump. How is it that Trump employees and supporters invariably become mired in his slime? How is it (to cite former GOP strategist Rick Wilson’s book) Everything that Trump Touches Dies? For answers, look at how a promising new faculty member and his pretty wife become embroiled in George and Martha’s long-running marriage debacle.
Nick is a good-looking and confident member of the biology department specializing in the next big thing (genetics). He’s also athletic, having been a former middle weight college boxing champion. When he first meets George, he can’t help but patronize him. After all, New Carthage’s president is telling Nick he has a glorious future while the washed-up history professor married to the president’s daughter has only a past. Nick knows he is favored when this daughter invites him and Honey over for post-party drinks.
Next thing he knows, he’s spilling dirty secrets to George and humping Martha (the verb is Albee’s) while his own wife throws up in the bathroom. To crown the evening, he can’t perform in the clutch and is called a “flop.” Martha orders him around like a houseboy and George is equally cutting, completing his emasculation:
Here’s part of his interchange with Martha:
Martha: …you’re no better than anybody else.
Nick (wearily): I think I am.
Martha (Her glass to her mouth): You’re certainly a flop in some departments.
Nick (Wincing): I beg your pardon . . . ?
Martha (Unnecessarily loud): I said, you’re certainly a flop in some. . . .
Nick: (He, too, too loud): I’m sorry you’re disappointed.
Martha (Braying): I didn’t say I was disappointed! Stupid!
Nick: You should try me some time when we haven’t been drinking for ten hours, and maybe. . . .
Martha: (Still braying): I wasn’t talking about your potential; I was talking about your goddamn performance.
Nick (Softly): Oh.
Martha (She softer, too): Your potential’s fine. It’s dandy. (Wiggles her eyebrows) Absolutely dandy. I haven’t seen such a dandy potential in a long time. Oh, but baby, you sure are a flop.
And later, after the doorbell rings:
Martha: Go answer the door.
Nick (Amazed): What did you say?
Martha: I said, go answer the door. What are you, deaf?
Nick (Trying to get it straight): You . . . want me . . . to go answer the door?
Martha: That’s right, lunk-head; answer the door. There must be something you can do well; or are you too drunk to do that, too? Can’t you get the latch up, either?
Nick: Look, there’s no need. . . .
(Door chimes again)
Martha (Shouting): Answer it! (Softer) You an be a houseboy around here for a while. You can start of being houseboy right now.
Nick: Loo, lady, I’m no flunky to you.
Martha (Cheerfully): Sure you are! You’re ambitious, aren’t you boy? You didn’t chase me around the kitchen and up the goddamn stairs out of mad, driven passion, did you know? You were thinking a little bit about your career, weren’t you? Well, you can just houseboy your way up the ladder for a while.
The next lines sum up Trump and the GOP only too well:
Nick: There’s no limit to you, is there?
(Door chimes again)
Martha: (Calmly, surely): No, baby; none. Go answer the door. (Nick hesitates) Look, boy; once you stick your nose in it, you’re not going to pull out just whenever you feel like it. You’re in for a while. Now, git!
Nick answers the door.
The once proud Lindsay Graham, now one of Trump’s major lickspittles, comes chiefly to my mind in the interchange, but in fact Nick could be any number of Republican legislators. George and Martha operate somewhat like Trump, throwing the young couple off balance and then pushing things further than they ever dreamed.
If Nick and Honey had core principles, they would walk out early, but they have embarrassing secrets of their own: an hysterical pregnancy has led to their marriage and the pot was sweetened when they inherited a fortune from Honey’s father, a shady preacher. Nick is also blinded by his ambition, his arrogance, and his lack of imagination. He and his wife never have a chance.
Come to think of it, maybe he’s not Sen. Graham but Trump attack dog Rep. Jim Jordan.
Only at the end do Nick and Honey, sensing the depth of George and Martha’s childless unhappiness, tiptoe away. Some dignity is salvaged by this recognition of their common humanity. Perhaps the two will profit from what they have seen and steer their marriage in a healthier direction.
I wish I saw some such soul-searching in Trump’s GOP followers. At the moment, however, everyone is still high on Trumpism, and the festivities appear far from over.
