#NEVERTHEASSCLOWN (profanity alert)

Sitting there on a table, several feet from where the 2016 Michigan GOP primary winner was holding forth, the meats were just beautiful. For the first time in world history, an election victory was accepted with an infomercial, presenting a delicious, I mean really terrific array of "Trump steaks," which were once sold at the Sharper Image. The winner also touted Trump water bottles, Trump wine, even a "Trump magazine" (a wealth-porn glossy actually called The Jewel of Palm Beach). He neglected to mention that some of the products weren't especially successful. (For some reason steaks just didn't sell at the Sharper Image.) But because Mitt Romney had questioned Donald Trump's business acumen a few days earlier, and because it's a sore topic, like the size of his fingers, Trump hoped to reassure us that he definitely was a businessman and totally knew what he was doing.

This is truly funny, but Trump doesn't seem to see it. He doesn't see that his claim of being a brilliant businessman might invite the question of whether selling steaks for $50 a pound (he even touted the high price) at the Sharper Image was a sound business proposition. (Jerry Levin, former CEO of the Sharper Image, has said, "We literally sold almost no steaks.") Plus he was so serious. Oblivious and very serious. Behold the ass-clown, who is telling the joke but somehow not in on it.

"For the showman, all is pretense for entertainment rather than for deception." The ass, among types of persons, is slow to understanding. Perhaps he's dull, stubborn, entrenched in his position, or just plain stupid. The clown, by contrast, seeks to entertain an audience with playful pretending or comedic exaggeration, with sharp sensitivity to what others find amusing or delightful or shocking. Putting these two types together, there is such a person as an ass-clown, someone who seeks an audience's enjoyment while being slow to understand how it views him.

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