The obligatory Good Friday Donald Trump column...

The internet is a marvelous thing, typing in the pejorative phrase "short fingered vulgarian" on the google search engine yields dozens of sites about real estate developer Donald Trump.
Yup, the Donald himself the man who brought bombast home to American architecture.
Purists out there will also recall the publicity obsessed Trump is also host and executive producer of "The Apprentice" a so called reality show wherein aspiring managers compete for a single cushy slot in the Trump High Command.
"The Apprentice" is fascinating for all the wrong reasons, Trump (a wench grabbing lout by all estimates) seems to have chosen the female contestants on their looks and the male aspirants on their ability to spout the latest business cliches like Old Faithful.
In sum, a dismal collection of shiny Babbits chasing a buck sans shame or dignity.
Just another day in the Trump Empire, which is a vast expanse of tasteless buildings, rhetorical superlatives, and promissory notes...all presided over by that bloated billionaire vulgarian whose pinched constipated look recalls the Emperor Vespasian.
My favorite part of the show are the bumpers wherein Trump looks into the camera narrows his beady little eyes and belches some Dale Carnegie bromides for the delectation of aspiring moguls in the audience. In an economy about equally divided between near bankrupt software designers and soda jerks at Dairy Queen these paeans of praise to "being passionate about what you do" are irony to put Turgenev to shame.

Hell no less a journal than Fortune Magazine can't seem to properly estimate the exact extent of Trump's wealth due to his plethora of half consummated deals, debt, and fluctuating real estate values.
In the end that vast fortune could all be hot air and may well be as Trump bids to restructure the huge debt he has incurred whilst fruitlessly attempting to conquer the gaming business.
Frankly, if I was one of Trump's offspring I'd save every penny from my allowance or trust fund, take the subway everywhere and clip coupons like a madman. The time may come when there will be less money there than meets the eye.
Well, what of it there is always some mega-clown stalking the earth playing a gleeful god with either their investors money or public revenues.
In the 1920's it was Jimmy Walker the funster Mayor of New York....in the 1950's it was wily bipolar Earle K. Long then governor of Louisiana.
And lets not forget William Randolph Hearst and freakish gigantism that was his "San Simeon" estate.
Trump is merely another free market embodiment of long cherished profligate tendencies....we sigh and chuckle over his neronian excesses even as he turns the New York skyline into what amounts to a garish "Mattel Super City" toy.