Recently, I annoyed and dismayed the wonderful, kindhearted editors at PJ Media for writing yet another column about boxing. (“Pinsker! If you haven’t noticed, we’re a political site and there’s a really big election going on!”) But sometimes, when you leap with gusto into one rabbit hole, you somehow find yourself in another.
And that’s exactly what happened here.
In the legendary “Rumble in the Jungle,” Muhammad Ali KO’d George Foreman. It’s one of the most famous moments in sports history. And in the 50 years that followed, Ali and Foreman remained in the limelight, but in dramatically different roles: Ali lost (and regained) the heavyweight title one more time, attempted two ill-advised comebacks against Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick, and spent his final days as a sad, stoic reminder of both the triumph of the human will… and the tragedy of pride (i.e. pugilistic dementia and/or Parkinson’s disease).
George Foreman, however, became a fat, happy pitchman.
It was a shocking transformation, because Foreman was originally perceived as a dark, brooding, unlikeable menace. But during his middle-aged comeback, Foreman was fat, bald, and constantly grinning. Heck, he was even selling us electric grills that “knocked out the fat!”
Everyone loved this version of George!
In fact, if he hadn't been so likable, undefeated heavyweight champion Michael Moorer would’ve never given him a title shot. (And the 30th anniversary of that fight is actually this November 5: they fought in 1994.) But Moorer had just beaten Evander Holyfield, and wanted an easy payday. Foreman might have been old, but he was still a good draw, so it was seen as a “safe fight” for the new champion.
In the leadup to the fight, plenty was written about Moorer’s malevolent psychology: He’s so angry! He’s prone to violence! Who knows what dark, sinister thoughts are spinning in his head!
Nobody wrote about George that way. After all, we love George: he’s fat and happy.
But at some point in their fight, a journalist realized that Foreman was wearing the same trunks he wore in the Rumble in the Jungle!
Foreman was so mentally tortured by that agonizing, humiliating, heartbreaking loss to Ali, it actually drove him to pull those trunks out of the mothballs. And those were the exact same shorts he wore when he KO’d Michael Moorer in the tenth round at age 45, becoming the oldest heavyweight champion in history.
That’s when the media realized they’d been psychoanalyzing the wrong man all along.
We’re approaching something similar in the 2024 election. So much has been written about Donald Trump’s psychology, always in the vilest of terms:
You name the ailment, he’s got it:
Narcissism? You betcha! Vanity Fair thinks so. The psychotherapist they dug up, Charlotte Prozan, actually said, “He’s very easy to diagnose.” (Even though they never met.) Mary Trump, his estranged niece, agreed. So did a “leading” psychoanalyst.
Sociopath? You betcha! Vanity Fair thinks so (they added that he’s a “violent sociopath,” in fact.) Mary Trump, his estranged niece, agreed. (Are you noticing a trend?)
Psychopath? You betcha! The New York Daily News thinks so. Mary Trump agreed — and so did her fellow psychologists.
Pathological? You betcha! Rolling Stone thinks so. Mary Trump, his estranged niece, agreed. “The most important thing is his behavior, which is clearly pathological,” she told the press.
God Complex? You betcha! Rolling Stone and CNN think so.
Megalomania? You betcha! Salon magazine thinks so.
Inferiority Complex? You betcha! CNN thinks so. So does MSNBC.
If the echoes of Goldwater weren’t evident enough, just four days ago George Conway’s PAC released an open letter of 230 psychiatrists and mental health “experts” who all agree that Trump is unfit for office due to his “symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder — malignant narcissism,” which has left him “deceitful, destructive, deluded, and dangerous.”
But whereas the media is fixated on Trump, have you noticed that the Democrats have become the party of Daddy Issues?
It began with Bill Clinton. Much has been written about Slick Willy’s (ahem) difficulties with “impulse control,” and his rocky, untraditional upbringing. Barack Obama also had Daddy Issues, with an absentee father (who was almost certainly violent and abusive) who saw him for the final time when Barack was only 10.
And this brings us to Kamala Harris. As we noted:
Did you know that Kamala and her father, Stanford professor Donald J. Harris, live just a mile apart in D.C., but never speak?
Did you know Professor Harris is her only living parent, but didn’t even appear at the Democratic National Convention to watch his own daughter accept her party’s nomination for president? (The New Yorker describes them as estranged.)
Furthermore:
I’m not condemning Harris for coming from a broken home: You can’t blame a seven-year-old for her parents’ marriage ending. But a bitter, angry divorce, where the husband leaves and everyone’s lives are uprooted, almost certainly produces psychological scarring in a small child.
Even a blind man could see there’s more to the story than what we’ve been told. There’s something deeper going on.
Donald Harris is her only living parent. After retiring from teaching at Stanford, he moved to D.C. and lives within one mile of his daughter. And they never speak? He didn’t even bother attending the DNC to watch his own daughter be nominated for president?
Yet how does Kamala Harris describe her childhood? C’mon, guys, say it with me: “I come from a middle-class family!”
It’s already a cliché. Long after Election Day comes and goes, that line will linger. Years from now, when someone asks you a difficult question, you’ll be able to generate the guffaws with a well-timed, “I come from a middle-class family!”
If anyone is suffering from profound, untreated psychological issues, it’s probably Kamala. …She literally can’t even mention her childhood without inventing a bogus story!
She didn’t come from a middle-class family; she came from a broken family. And today, her family is still broken.
Want more proof that the Democratic Party has become the party of Daddy Issues? Kamala Harris snubbed “The Joe Rogan Experience” — literally the most influential podcast in the Western world — to do the “Call Her Daddy” podcast instead!
Paging Doctor Freud…
Of course, some media members are gonna put a happy face on it. The New York Times actually cited Barack Obama and Bill Clinton as positive examples in their op-ed, “When Children Are Better Off Fatherless.”
That’s not to say that conservatives always hail from perfect, immaculate families. Gerald Ford’s father was a cruel alcoholic. At the tender age of 11, young Ronald Reagan had to drag his drunken father indoors when he passed out in the snow. Nor does it mean we should ever blame a child for their parents’ shortcomings.
But clearly, there’s a very real connection between one party espousing traditional family values, and the other party agreeing with the New York Times: Hey, lots of kids are better off without a Dad! They’re really not necessary.
Perhaps the absence of a reliable, caring, loving father will manifest itself in unpredictable ways. Perhaps Kamala’s (rumored) affinity for alcohol and history of May-December relationships with much-older men, including Willie Brown, are indicative of untreated trauma. (Harris and Brown dated when she was in her 20s and he was his 60s.)
Could be a lot of things. Could be none of these things.
But either way, there’s a chair behind the Oval Office desk — not a couch. The presidency is NOT a job for the mentally unwell. Harris emerged as the Democrat’s preemptive nominee 104 days ago and STILL hasn’t held a single formal press conference. Her campaign is unwilling to place her in unpredictable (and un-editable) situations.
Unfortunately, the presidency is the most unpredictable job in the world. And Kamala, it seems, is burdened with too many “issues” to handle the workload.
She certainly hasn’t proven otherwise… and there’s only three days left.
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