Wednesday, August 17, 2016

What if Donald Trump were a Sherlockian?

It's been an interesting week.

And the thing about interesting weeks, they don't just get over and done so quickly. In talking about things political and Sherlockian, I have, perhaps, been a little politic myself and held back from going full bore ("bore" having the perfect double meaning for the situation). But it does make one think, raising the question, "What if Donald Trump were a Sherlockian?"

From the start, our American political fireball has been loved by his fans for being plain-speaking and not holding anything back, no matter who it might offend. No filters. And we do have a few Sherlockians like that, whom you may have met at some meeting or banquet. Yet those folks don't tend to be running any major publications, well-known podcasts, or having their every wacky comment featured in every stream of Sherlockian social media.

So what would Donald Trump be like as a Sherlockian? Not too hard to imagine, you start with that standard line, and just go . . .

"We are going to make Sherlock Holmes great again. We're going to take him off those charity networks like PBS and CBS and put him on HBO, right after Game of Thrones. And we're going to get a real American Englishman to play him, like that Chris Hemsworth . . . have you heard him do that accent he does . . . fantastic. And Doctor Watson . . . we're going to make him so much smarter than those other guys. A brain surgeon, like my friend Ben Carson. Maybe even a rocket science brain surgeon who uses rockets to perform the surgery . . . a real genius. And I know genius. No one is smarter than me . . . except maybe Sherlock Holmes, but we all know he's fictional, right?"

"We print up some more books, get some really great writers on that. We get Holmes and Watson to stop flirting with each other like those British TV guys made 'em do. You know the British . . . (does offensive hand gestures) . . . Sherlock Holmes was never great until his books got over here, you know that. Mr. Lippincott paid Conan Doyle some good American dollars for him, and the detective thing just took off! Sky high! And that's where we're going to take Sherlock Holmes again."

"What else, what else . . . I have this idea . . . we should have a big fancy dinner once a year. I mean real fancy. And just let the best Sherlock Holmes people come to it. The best! You don't know who Frankie Hays Molsons is, you don't get in. I don't care if you're Canadian. Okay, we might let you in if you're Canadian. They have some good Sherlock Holmes people in Canada. But you still have to pass the test. And we get a real looker to come in and be THE woman every year, like my daughter Ivanka. And I can hand out some kind of fancy coins to the other lookers in the room . . . gold coins, of course. Old doubloons or something. Just like Sherlock Holmes did. I've got all the best ideas."

"We can make a list of all the best Sherlock Holmes people and put it in a vault at Harvard or Yale, so those guys know who to come to when they want to ask a question about Sherlock Holmes. Because you don't want them to just go to anybody. You walk up to some guy on the street, say "Tell me about Sherlock Holmes!" and he says "Oh, he's a junkie from New York!" We can't have that. Nobody thought Sherlock Holmes was a junkie from New York before the Baker Street Babes had a podcast. I blame them for this. We need to make Sherlock Holmes great again!"

Sherlockian Donald Trump is quite a free spirit, it seems. I think his hometown scion society must consist entirely of servants and other paid functionaries, because he seems to also be free of corrections.

"People like to ask me about the Canon. I've got the best Canon. My Canon has all the stuff right in it. Dr. Watson's wound? In the shoulder. There, done, no need to thank me. But my Canon isn't public domain, so if you use that, you have to pay my estate. Look, you can be some poor loser and have an estate when you're dead and try to get people to pay to use your Canon, but I've gotten around that. You want to use my Canon, you pay my estate. And you'll be getting some of the best Canon you ever got, trust me on this."

There's something very therapeutic about channelling a Sherlockian with no boundaries or limits or facts. And the thought of just not holding anything back is very attractive, especially when you do have a few facts on your side. But is it a good idea?

Well, let's ask Sherlockian Donald Trump.

"Hey, do I have anything but good ideas? Sherlockians love me. The best Sherlockians . . . beautiful people, you should see them . . . they turn out by the thousands when I speak at a symposium. And they love my ideas! Like the one about stopping those Canadian writers from stealing all the jobs writing for Canadian Holmes and making them pay for our subscriptions! Great ideas!"

That was a mistake. I think it's time to slip quietly away before he says anything more.

It's been an interesting week.

2 comments:

  1. That sounded... uncomfortably accurate. Now I'm going to have nightmares. ::shivers::

    ReplyDelete