Name calling won’t work against Hillary
Allow me to introduce you to some inner city Americana.
They call it “Playin’ the Dozens.”
While it begins with the word “Playin’,” it’s hardly a game.
I’m told (although I haven’t verified it) “Playin’ the Dozens,” got its roots during slavery.
Slave traders would sometimes sell their “trade” to slave owners in groups of 12.
Some slave traders would throw in an extra slave for good measure.
Sort of a baker’s dozen, except they weren’t bestowing their friendly commerce with an extra dinner roll. They used people.
That “extra” slave, I would assume, would most likely be an older woman, well past her child bearing years, and beyond the age in which she could easily toil in the fields.
She was the odd person out.
Apparently that led to jokes about mothers being that extra slave – and the term “Playin’ the Dozens” was born.
There’s nothing really that unusual when it comes to making jokes about somebody’s mother.
In the wider culture, there’ve always been phrases like, “Your mother wears Army boots.”
“Playin’ the Dozens,” though, is a far more vicious.
Whenever I’d congregate with my friends when I was a teenager, and my mother would happen to walk by, I had to be prepared to hear something like this: “Your mommas so fat she went to McDonalds and they had to call Wendy’s for backup.”
“Playin’ the Dozens,” while not really a game, does have one rule. When somebody engages in verbal roughhouse regarding one of your parents, if you cry, want to fight or even flinch – you lose!
In my neighborhood, you’d either outgrow your thin-skin, or you’d stay at home and, probably, under your bed.
Donald Trump didn’t grow up in the inner city, but he sure knows how to “Play the Dozens.”
Last Tuesday, he called into Fox and Friends, and he launched an attack on Ted Cruz’ father, Rafael.
There’d been a National Enquirer cover story that supposedly linked Rafael Cruz to Lee Harvey Oswald within days of the Kennedy assassination.
First, it’s the National Enquirer. Next week those folks could easily claim that Donald Trump secretly fathered a goat.
Second, well there is no second. The story about Cruz’ father is a complete fabrication.
But Trump, King of “Playin’ the Dozens,” knew he had an opening – especially on the morning of the all-important Indiana primary election.
“What is this, prior to his (Kennedy) being shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said, with not a hint of the fun he knew he was brewing for Ted Cruz.
“What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting? It’s horrible,” he added.
Trump is simply a master of getting people to respond to his silliness.
He’s nicknamed Cruz, “Lyin’ Ted,” Marco Rubio, “Little Marco,” and Jeb Bush “Low energy Jeb,” for a reason.
He just knows how to get under people’s skins.
In fact, Trump’s antics got Rubio so worked up after one debate, Rubio devoted large chunks of his speeches to angrily attacking Trump.
It didn’t work, so “Little Marco” was forced to drop out of the race.
Cue Ted Cruz.
During an emotional 10-minute rant in which Cruz broke the only “Playin’ the Dozens” rule, he not only flinched, he came close to crying, and he probably would’ve challenged Trump to a duel if he’d been in the same room.
He called Trump “nuts,” a “pathological liar,” a “serial philanderer,” a “narcissist,” “amoral,” a “bully,” and somebody who admitted that “venereal disease was his personal Vietnam.”
Since Cruz’ Tuesday morning tirade, followed by his blistering Tuesday night defeat in Indiana, he’s gone back to Texas to stew over his inability to appear calm in the face of “The Dozens.”
Trump now sees his next victim is Hillary Clinton, whom he’s begun calling “Crooked Hillary.”
Welcome to the big leagues Mr. Trump.
Rubio and Cruz took the bait.
I doubt that Hillary will.
She’s had a lot of practice, and I’ll bet she’s pretty good at “Playin’ the Dozens,” too.
Edward A. Owens is a three time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net