Send him to Coventry

The Phantom Raspberry-Blower of Old London Town is dangerous only to those who listen to him

To send someone to Coventry is an English expression which means to have no interaction with that person, not speaking to them, not listening to them, and not reacting to them.

In the 1980s, an established duo of comedians both named Ronnie introduced a new continuing serial into their weekly show of jokes, sketches and general family fun. They were The Two Ronnies, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. The new running series was The Phantom Raspberry-Blower of Old London Town, modelled on Jack the Ripper, Hammer horror movies of the 70s, and, perhaps, also the funniest joke in the world, a sketch by Monty Python in which a joke is so funny, people laugh themselves to death, such that it is then deployed as a weapon of mass destruction in the war against Germany.

In The Phantom Raspberry-Blower, Victorian ladies and gentlemen would be shocked out of their bloomers by a spectral figure who had loomed through a pea-soup fog and then attacked them with a resounding raspberry (or, in the U.S., Bronx cheer). Here’s a taster (well, an hour and five minutes of taster):

The essence of the shock imparted by a raspberry is wholly dependent on you hearing it. If you don’t hear it, then, unlike a knife drawn across your throat, or a bullet shot at your heart, a raspberry has no effect whatsoever on you.

Now, deafness can be a good thing, or a bad thing. In the fun world of the Raspberry-Blower, deafness ensured your survival. But last week, I was shocked and stunned by a radio publicity spot by GAIA, an animal rights organisation in Belgium. The announcer states that listeners are about to hear the sound of a sheep being slaughtered without anaesthetic. There is some rustling and various metallic noises, until the announcer cuts back in to say: That’s right, you cannot hear the sheep’s screeching; its vocal chords have been sliced in the same movement as its throat was slit. It is a very moving 30 seconds, and you won’t readily forget it, but it is controversial: Muslims feel it is an attack on their religious ways of preparing butcher’s meat. It is the silence of the sheep that is the prime cause of your shock.

I mention the radio spot as a diametric opposite of the Two Ronnies’ sketch. In one, not hearing the sheep does not mean it isn’t in distress; in the other, not hearing the Blower means you’re safe and secure.

So what would not hearing Mr Trump mean for you? Do you race to the headlines to find out what idiocy he has been spouting in public speeches or on his web portal? Do you sit agog waiting for Ms Leavitt to explain his nonsense away as perfect normality? Can you not wait to hear about the next city to be targeted in his orgy of outrage?

All these stories and more are worthy of outrage. But there’s a problem: all the experts tell us that outrage is precisely what Mr Trump is after. He relishes the shock and horror in liberals’ faces when he commits an outrage. We know for a fact that he is a rapist, and I have spoken about rape several times on this blog. Here are just three contributions, but do a search—there are much more.

My preoccupation with rape, which may strike some as distasteful, is not a preoccupation with sex, although there is a time and place for everything. It’s a preoccupation with what drives lust for power, and rape is all about power. What feeds into that is the delight a rapist feels in taking something that is forbidden to him (it’s always a man; even women rapists are goaded by men). I again and again draw on a simple observation: that if you want to satiate your sexual lust, there are ways to do so that are far less risky and far more pleasurable than rape, like engaging the services of a prostitute. But that doesn’t interest a rapist, because a prostitute will say “yes” when she’s propositioned for sex; it’s her livelihood and job, that’s the service she provides, and it is that fact that turns him off. Rape is not about sex; it is about theft—stealing someone’s morality and trashing it before their very eyes. That is what Mr Trump is doing to America: he is stealing its morality and trashing it before your eyes. And he’s loving it.

What a rapist loves about the act of rape is the woman’s objection. Her saying “no” is saying “yes” to him, if only because her saying “no” is the defining moment at which the ambivalent act becomes de iure classified as rape. It’s his being a rapist that turns him on. If a woman says “yes”, he’s already less interested in her, because de iure he ceases to be a rapist in that moment.

In Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca, Mrs Danvers forbids the new Mrs de Winter from entering one particular room at Manderley. Well, it’s almost predictable from the outset. It is Mrs de Winter entering Rebecca’s room that is the start of the unwinding of the whole story: people can’t leave what’s forbidden to them, especially if a sort of gambler’s approach to life turns the chances of getting away with a crime into a wager. Think of Hannibal Lecter as an extreme example.

In the opening scenes of The Silence of the Lambs (yes, those sheep again), Anthony Hopkins lures Jodie Foster to come closer to the bars of his cell: he needs to see the fear and shock in her eyes. Nothing delights him more than the trauma she is going through. What Hannibal Lecter enjoys is proving his dominance even from within a high-security prison cell. His skill and knowledge guarantee his success. Trump has no skill or knowledge: he guarantees his success by cheating and corrupting. Nobody need see any Epstein files to know he’s a pervert: and even if we did, it would hardly unseat him. (N.B. perverts love being called perverts: a true pervert makes no pretence of being morally upstanding. They wallow in perversion.)

There is one way, in my humble view, that has not yet been tried in an effort to discombobulate Mr Donald Trump, and that is: ignoring him. I mean it: don’t listen to his raspberries, his madnesses and his idiosyncrasies. Pay no attention. When he gives an outrageous speech, let the liberal TV stations lead with: it was a lovely day today with temperatures of 58 degrees, although the primroses are out just a few weeks early, say expert horticulturalists. Mr and Mrs Smith are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary next week and will be holding a party for the entire village. We’d like to congratulate Gary Jones on learning to ride a bicycle without stabilisers Good one, Gary! Next year: Tour de France!

Do it. Ignoring Mr Trump is his worst fear and will irritate him more than itching powder. He will up the ante, no fear. But say nothing. Not one word. Not a murmur. Not to your friends or to your Congresspeople. He wants to change everything in America and the world. So change it for him: give him silence. He will burn with curiosity to know what’s up, what you’re plotting and what you’re planning. Even if it’s nothing. Let websites and TV stations broadcast anodyne reports and blank pages. Today there is no news that is new. So we bring you blank pages. And if they do, they show their support, so buy them. Yes, buy their blank copy. Subscribe to blank newsprint. Support those who’re supporting you. He will wank over “How dare he?” And he will rage over a blank page.

That way you can send the implicit message back to him: no matter what he does, he changes nothing. He wants normality? Give him your normality. Your unperturbed normality, and he will rage like Rumpelstiltskin.

Yes, many are suffering from his cruelties. But giving him the oxygen of publicity will not alleviate their suffering. It is staying silent that will defeat him. He is not mastering the airwaves: he is blabbing arrant nonsense, and even his supporters are seeing through it. He is digging himself a hole and all you need to do is stand in silence and watch him do it. When he gets to six feet down, he will look sheepishly up at you. And then, you can start to fill in the hole. I warrant you.

A mass campaign of civil media disobedience. Like Gandhi’s salt, cotton spinning, and marches. The British sought to defeat Indian nationalism by beating those who disobeyed with cudgels. They simply came and were cudgelled, again, and again, and again, and again. Until the British packed up and went home.

In the scene of the film Gandhi in which the salt march is depicted, it is the actor Martin Sheen who plays the American reporter referencing Webb Miller. Would it not be wonderful if the defiance of the American people against this cruel president were to be reported in like fashion, by an Indian journalist?

They walked, both Hindu and Moslem alike, with heads held high without any hope of escape from injury or death—it went on and on into the night. STOP. Women carried the wounded and broken bodies from the road until they dropped from exhaustion. STOP. But still it went on and on. STOP. Whatever moral ascendency the west held was lost here today—India is free, for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give and she has neither cringed nor retreated. STOP.

Neither cringe, nor retreat. Nor must you revel in your success. Complete radio silence.

Send your president to Coventry.