President Trump: Today's Outrage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Bodies have been washing up on the south shore of Long Island recently. Police are flummoxed as to who might have been the perpetrator of this dastardly crime. They're worried, but I'm not. Any day now, I expect Donald Trump to hold a press conference and issue a public confession.

After all, that is what the Trump 2011 Presidential Tour is all about: publicity, with a kind of Charlie Sheen-style self-inflicted humiliation thrown in for good measure. People around the nation are appalled by Trump's adoption of the "birther" psychosis that claims President Obama really stowed away on a merchant vessel as an infant after he was born in Kenya. I'm not.

Sure, we all know what is happening here. Trump is engaging in this determined effort to boost the ratings of his latest "reality" show, Celebrity Apprentice. But what hasn't been explored in the media is the "why" factor. Why is Trump doing this? Why would a man of his age and ancestral wealth -- depleted as it is by his historic record of business failures -- why is he behaving so meshugah?

Let us strap on our seatbelts, friends, and begin our journey into Donald Trump's America.

We all know the Donald's humble beginnings, as a barefoot boy in Queens, his father a humble workingman who only built a couple of dozen thousand apartments and row houses. His New York Times obituary says Fred C. Trump "helped change the face of Brooklyn and Queens with thousands of homes for the middle class in plain, but sturdy, brick rental towers, clustered together in immaculately groomed parks." But you know how the Times exaggerates in obituaries. My information is that the elder Trump was actually a building superintendent, and that his genius offspring actually put up all those buildings.

The Trump progeny strove to do something better of his life than be a mere landlord. Donald decided that he wasn't just going to be another guy sitting in an office, collecting rents and filing vacancy-decontrol forms. So he decided where his real talents lied: self-promotion. He became a master at his chosen profession.