Sunday 24 July 2016

trademark, earmark

Though there is no law proscribing that an American president cannot be engaged in private commercial activity—though most are more discrete about it, having their income tied up in plantations, speakers’ fees, book deals or in other monetary instruments, no other candidate has founded his pre-political career on image and personality so as to seem inexorably inseparable from the brand as our mogul Silvio Berlusconi.
Notwithstanding the inherent conflict of interest that presents itself when pledging to restrict Muslim immigration despite lending his name to business towers in Istanbul and Dubai, there are a whole array of products, like premium vodka, subscription steak deliveries, cologne, a winery, a diploma-mill in addition to the casinos and beauty-pageants that the candidate might have to divest himself of. With the campaign slogan, “America—you can be my ex-wife,” I wonder who the lucky recipient of this alimony might be. I suspect Berlusconi or a coalition government formed by one of Stevie Nick’s shawls and the scalp of Trump’s own balding pate might make for a more beneficent rule.