Time’s a-wastin’

Thanks to Michael Wolff and the rest of the press wolf pack, we now know a lot more about how the president is performing his duties. We already knew he wasn’t reading, being briefed, negotiating the details of complex legislation, managing the executive branch, or engaging in strategic planning.

Now the details have emerged to show just how productively he spends his time. We already knew he was up bright and early, at 6:30 or so, watching Fox News to see what was being said about him and tweeting in response, or passing on the latest conspiracy theory.

But we now know that his so-called “Executive Time” is actually time spent hanging around the residence in his PJs, and that it extends to 11:00 in the morning. In addition to watching TV about himself, he presumably spends a lot of time creating the coif that Ivanka describes as the result of scalp surgery, elaborate sculpting, dye and spray.

Then he puts in a grueling seven hours or so on the job, which includes watching a bank of three TVs in the dining room next to the Oval Office where he eats his cheeseburger for lunch while seeing what they are saying about him. Then he screams at subordinates, belittles members his family and of Congress, talks to his defense lawyers, and tells the same stories over and over.

At 6:30 he heads back to the residence to eat a cheeseburger in bed, vent on the phone to old friends, and watch TV to see what they’re saying about him. To be fair, he sometimes flies around the country to talk about himself and to bask in applause and adulation. And then he golfs, and eats cheeseburgers.

This regimen has been mocked as appalling narcissism, but it may also be a sign that he is exactly what he appears to be: An angry, old man watching TV alone, reliving past glories and obsessing about slights and disappointments. Who can’t relate to that. Glory days, (the wink in a young immigrant girl’s eye), they’ll pass you by.

More alarming is the notion that perhaps he’s just a supersize 21st Century Man. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, the iPhone and other dubious innovations, we can all become stars of our own solipsistic universe, our own personal reality show.

We can tweet our every thought, or blog them, friend and unfriend people, share photos, videos, amateur porn and X-rays of ourselves. We are all at risk of becoming teenage girls, if all we did was write in our diary 24/7 and the diary instead of being secret and locked with a key was shared with the whole, wide world, like a naked Kardashian. “What are the cool boys saying about us? What are the mean girls gossiping about ? OMG, LOL.”

Since Trump is president, he has discovered that every news outlet, foreign government, pundit, diplomat, friend, and enemy worldwide is constantly talking about him. So, he can spend every waking minute exposed to the drama of himself, and can talk back in real time. Or perhaps we should say, unreal time.

What he apparently can’t do is look away. No wonder he sleeps so little. He’s the star of the biggest reality show in history, and the show must go on. Who’s got time to think, read, consider, plan, decide or learn to spell? He’s busy in hair and make-up, preening, orating, reacting to bad reviews, and gazing in the cyber-mirror while tweeting the news far and wide that he’s the fairest of them all.

Pathetic and comic, but we are all in danger of vanishing down the same rabbit hole to Wonderland. And we can assume productivity in general will suffer if everyone who is supposed to be working for a living is checking their newsfeed, tweeting, texting, trolling, sharing, friending, and posting. If this goes on, not just the government will grind to a halt, but every office and factory. Luckily, the robots are about to take over every job, so we’ll be able to devote ourselves constantly to our real lives online. Every man his own avatar.

Still, it’s worth considering what’s being lost. Keats died at 25 having written just 54 poems. If he were working today, wouldn’t he be making time to text Fanny, tweet, and send snaps of himself to friends instead of struggling to write a bunch of Odes about Urns, Nightingales and Autumn. Shelley lived a bit longer, dying at thirty, and left more poems behind, but if he had become addicted to tweet-storms he probably would have had very little time for Skylarks, the West Wind, Adonais or Ozymandias.

Lord Byron died at 36, but from what we know about his character he would probably have loved sending pictures of his package and cyberstalking women as much as Anthony Weiner, and swiping right and left on Tinder, so he might not have bothered writing about that chick who walked in beauty like the night, Don Juan or Childe Harold. We’d be lucky to have a dirty limerick from him.

Van Gogh died at 37, but managed to cram over 800 paintings into that time, but if he’d been on the web he’d have been lucky to have produced 400. Mozart, same thing. Dead at 35 with over 600 compositions, but if he’d spent 10 hours a day of “Executive Time” on the internet or watching TV, he might only have left behind a jingle or two.

There is a silver lining, however. The next Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs probably won’t have time to invent the next infernal machine. They will spend their lives wasting time on Facebook, their iPhones, and Twitter.

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