America Loves a Mob Boss

The comparisons of Trump World to the hit mafia TV series The Sopranos intensified Wednesday with the testimony, before the House Oversight Committee, of the president's convicted former fixer, Michael "The Rat" Cohen.

Although not nearly as bloody or profanity-ridden as the HBO drama, the nine-hour spectacle did its best to titillate, as members of the committee (with the possible exceptions of Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) tried to steal the show in a series of truncated showboating walk-on appearances.

Worst actress honors should probably go to former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who was forced to resign from that role (but unfortunately not from Congress) when WikiLeaks dumps revealed she had done underhanded things to hurt Bernie Sanders and swing the nomination to Hillary Clinton. Her scripted part in the hearing therefore consisted largely of one series of blame-shifting words: "Russiarussiarussiarussia," despite the admonitions from Committee Chair Elijah Cummings to his repertory company to steer clear of that delicate topic during the soliloquies masquerading as questions.

The delicate topic of Russiarussiarussia was to be explored in a separate closed-door hearing before the House's judiciary committee next week. So we will have to satisfy ourselves with the one-man show to be performed by Committee Chair Adam Schiff in order to get a secondhand account of the next episode.

Meanwhile, if the critics are still wondering why as much as 40 percent of the electorate are still 'uge fans of Donald Trump, they should remember that a shockingly large proportion of die-hard Sopranos viewers were also rooting for mob boss Tony Soprano as he whacked and lied and threatened his way into the hearts and minds and living rooms of America. David Chase, the show's creator, often expressed chagrin that his brilliant satire of American organized crime and political corruption, and its biting portrayals of the rank stupidity, viciousness and greed of Tony and his assorted henchmen, enablers, hangers-on and complicit relatives, were construed by much of the public as a slightly bloodier, cooler version of Father Knows Best. Chase worried that his critical portrayal of violence was making violence normal and even desirable in viewers who got hooked on the weekly knee-capping scenes juxtaposed with the enviable luxuriant lifestyles of the whacky cast of knee-cappers 

Cohen is probably right to fear for his own safety and that of his family members. All that Mob Boss Trump has to do is send out a mass tweet, and at least a few of his vast unpaid army of fans and true believers are bound to take the bait and strive to create and act out their own bit parts in this saga.

When James Gandolfini, the late actor who portrayed Tony Soprano, was hurt in a scooter accident in New York City one day in 2006, a concerned fan rushing to his aid frantically asked: "Tony, are you O.K.?"

Gandolfini, obviously upset that his TV role had typecast him, snarled at the fan through his pain: "I am not Tony. That's just a character that I play!"

Not that all the supporting players in The Sopranos were necessarily upstanding humans in their true lives, though. Some had real-life mob associations, and one was even convicted of murder after appearing in the series. The last season of the show really hit close to home for me and my own family, when an actor named Louis Gross, playing the part of Tony Soprano's bodyguard, suddenly appeared on our TV screen. It was the very same Louis Gross who had bullied my daughter, among other pupils, about a decade before when they were in middle school.

Although he got away with his rotten behavior in middle school, Gross was not so lucky in high school, when he and his pals still thought that throwing rocks at girls from behind bushes was cool, and he got suspended. In adulthood, if you can call it that, he was arrested for allegedly beating up his girlfriend and for trying to spend some counterfeit hundred-dollar bills that he had xeroxed himself. It turned out that he was one of those die-hard Sopranos fans who loved Tony so much and took the show so seriously that he reportedly bulked up on steroids to win the part of "Muscles Marinara." 

As Cohen testified on Wednesday, Trump himself is a consummate actor who only ran for president to market his business empire and his floundering TV series. He never expected to win the highest office in the land. Unlike Gandolfini, he is a character actor playing himself in his own virtual spin-off of a reality show, a character who has fully embraced his new, unexpected and much-expanded star turn as Mob Boss of the entire country.

And, Cohen warned, if Trump's latest hit series is cancelled in 2020, it won't be an abrupt Sopranos-style blackout. After that series finale, all that the fans and critics could do was complain that it was lazy cop-out on David Chase's part, and that they were unfairly cheated out of a satisfying final bloodbath, if not a happily-ever-after denouement.

 When The Trumps ends, Cohen told the panel in the cliff-hanging finale of his own episode, “Indeed, given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power, and this is why I agreed to appear before you today.” 

Cohen acknowledged that his remarks were edited, if not actually scripted, by his pro bono attorney, longtime Clinton henchman Lanny Davis, the author of such brilliant but underrated scripts  as "I Was the Back Channel Bag Man of the Illegal US Coup in Honduras."

That particular show got low ratings because Davis didn't actually kneecap or bludgeon to death the democratically elected president of Honduras to prevent him from raising the minimum wage and returning land, stolen by corporate American agribusinesses, to subsistence farmers. Davis, acting on behalf of the Clinton State Department, merely subcontracted out to the military the job of frogmarching the president out of his house in the middle of the night. It was a bloodless coup, with the main bloody violence and refugee crisis coming afterward. The US media didn't hype it, so American viewers were not attracted to it.

It's no wonder that Cohen's testimony was conveniently scheduled for the very same day that Trump was negotiating a (failed) peace deal with North Korea. The neocons and permanent security state henchmen really running this show don't want peace with North Korea. It's hard out there for a godfather president trying to negotiate with a minor, but no less dangerous, mob boss when the Big Guy's grisly reputation is being dragged through the mud by the corporate duopoly back home on live TV. Lanny Davis (pictured below at left) just couldn't seem to keep the smirk off his face during the nine hours that Michael the Rat was being "grilled" by the actors of the Oversight Committee.  

Cohen himself could barely keep the smirk off his own face at times as he explained all the mistakes that were made before he got caught.

But not to worry. This series will not be ending any time soon, as Democratic leaders hastily reiterated their pledge that impeachment is still totally off the table. Oversight Chair Cummings even bragged, “Isn’t it interesting that not one person on our side even mentioned the word impeachment? Not one.” 

When you want to hook the country on a mobster soap opera and keep the ratings high, it is always best not to cram too much mayhem and satisfying closure into any one episode, lest people get jaded or bored. As Cummings told reporters, "It's best to proceed cautiously."  

Because cliffhangers sell. So do new and recurring characters and subplots and campaigns for awards shows.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who's been getting rave reviews for her own lead part as Trump's feminine foil in The Wall episodes, did her best Carmela Soprano impression after Wednesday's hearing, disingenuously claiming to know nothing at all about it. She told reporters she had been "too busy" to pay any attention to it.

The show must always go on. Actors gotta act.