Photo by Max Goldberg | CC BY 2.0
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.— From “This be the Verse” by Philip Larkin
When it comes to playing the role of an idiot, Donald Trump, Jr. is certainly no Prince Myshkin. He doesn’t even rise to the level of Faulkner’s Benjy Compson. Still, it may be possible to squeeze out a little bit of empathy for the man-child of Park Avenue.
Yes, I know, in most respects Micro-Donald is an utterly unappetizing specimen of humanity, who flies around the planet slaughtering rare species (such as this endangered leopard) for bloody selfies. But the boy is the progeny of Donald Trump and who among us would want to endure the torments of that brand of child-rearing? By all accounts, Trump’s parenting skills were stern, cold and brutal. There were no games of catch in Central Park, no camping trips to the Adirondacks, no help with homework.
“When I spent time with my father it wasn’t playing ball in the backyard,” Donnie told the New York Times in 2010. “I came to his office and listened to him do business or sat in on meetings.”
For most of Donnie’s childhood, he rarely saw his father or mother. He was nurtured by Irish nannies and Ivana’s mother and then shipped off to The Hill, a boarding school for the children of elites in Potsdown, Pennsylvania.
Don’s sister Ivanka, whom Trump seems smitten by, described what it was like when Daddy…