Not that Hollywood really means anything anymore–at least in terms of being held up as an impenetrable beacon of light that we should all aspire to, could only dream of being a part of–but it still serves as the ultimate symbol. A symbol of an America that no longer exists, the one that still convinces Europeans to leave their cush living situations amid non-processed food to join us in the bowels. But now, it has also taken on a new kind of symbolism. One that represents just how far off track our politics have become–that it takes going for the jugular of Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame to get his, and everyone else’s, attention; as opposed to, say, a woman who prostrates herself at the foot of the Statue of Liberty in protest of migrant children being held in captivity while separated from their parents.
There’s somehow something “sexier” about (literally) hitting right where it hurts: someone’s “unbesmirchable,” “unequivocal” contributions to the world via the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In Trump’s case, however, his star has been met with constant dulling in the recent past–as recently as October 2016, when James Otis, heir of the Otis Elevator Company, did the same thing with a pickaxe. And, perhaps feeling sympathetic to the person he unwittingly mentored, 24-year-old Austin Clay, Otis is now posting the latest vandal’s $20,000 bail.
Clay, who approached the star around 3:30 a.m. on July 24th (or does that make it 25th? Time is so malleable during these hours of the pre-dawn), removed his weapon of choice from a guitar case and went to town, taking the rage out as though feeling a collective source of energy from the unprecedented masses that hate Trump in new and growing ways with each passing day of the presidency. Leaving it nice and decimated for those fat, pasty Midwestern tourists who likely voted for Trump to pick up pieces of it in the morning as they roamed the boulevard like bovine vultures. They wanted a souvenir of the star, now an unwitting art performance in an endless stream of them serving to immortalize the most divisive political era in history (one doesn’t even feel as though Herbert Hoover was this hated).
And, Trump being who he is–the most celebrity-obsessed of all, in a testament to how he currently reflects American values back to the population–has undoubtedly been affected by this gesture (reminder: this is also a “man” who has a conniption when he sees CNN on the TV, because it forces him to view how he is actually seen versus how he is permitted to see himself on a constant basis thanks to the luxury of a delusion bubble paid for by obscene wealth). It’s just somewhat disconcerting that of all the various forms of protests that have taken place since the advent of this pea (and pee)-brained rapist into the office once called the U.S. presidency (since renamed to U.S. Imperial High Chair), this–the vandalism of a star in an imaginary concept called Hollywood–is what has seemed to make the most impactful statement to people.
In the end, it’s only right, though. America speaks not in the language of Teddy Roosevelt politics, so much as Kim Kardashian angling. We’ve gone too far down the road of Boschian spectacles to turn back now. And if you’re lucky, maybe you can be a part of history by buying a piece of the star, or contributing to Clay’s bail on GoFundMe.
