It’s a silly thing, right? Hand size? I mean, here’s the real question: What kind of person argues about the size of their hands?
A couple of days ago, I posted a picture of Donald Trump on my Facebook page. He was standing between Melania and President Obama, and I noticed something. His hands looked small. Startlingly small. Like, “so small that I had to do some research to make sure it wasn’t photoshopped” small. So I did my research before posting it to insure that I was not adding to the sea of fake images out there, and–sure enough–it was real. His hands appeared to be dwarfed by ALL THREE of their hands… Barack’s, Michelle’s, and Melania’s. So I posted the image, and I captioned it “Look at those tiny little doll hands.” Here is an uncropped image of the four of them standing there… Hands exposed.
Michelle is cracking up because she’s imagining giving him five…
Now, you can imagine what the comments might be like when someone posts something like this on Facebook. There were people poking fun, there were people wondering (like I did) if the image was photoshopped there were people pointing out the childishness and cruelty involved in making fun of something about a person’s body which he had no control over, there were the inevitable allusions to what small hands meant to the size of his penis… Which led to the best joke on the thread, “Besides, I’m sure his penis looks huge when held by those tiny hands.” And then there was me threatening to block anyone who made me think of Donald Trump’s penis ever again–You know… the usual.
Which Bible do you want to be sworn in on, Mr. Trump? “Just bring me the smallest one you’ve got–I need my hands to look YUGE.”
But I spent some time thinking about the criticism leveled against us for discussing and making fun of this man’s body… A body that I whole-heartedly believe is made in the image of God, and is worthy of being loved. I was accused of bullying–which didn’t set well with me (It wasn’t bullying, by the way. I worked for close to 10 years teaching kids about bullying, and in order for someone to get bullied, there has to be an imbalance of power. Which is why Trump mocking Serge Kovaleski’s disabled arm WAS bullying, but since Trump holds arguably the most powerful position on the planet right now, me poking fun of his doll hands was NOT bullying). But it certainly wasn’t kind. And I freely admit–It was far from my best self. I tried to figure out why I cared one way or the other. Do I really care that it’s been proven that Trump’s hands smaller than 85% of male hands? I’m not usually the sort who shames a person because of a body difference… Although–like many of us–the chances of me saying something cruel usually go up when I don’t like someone… And I really, REALLY don’t like this guy. I was probably letting down Michelle, because she said, “When they go low, we go high,” and here I was… Going low by posting this picture of his obviously small hands. And who wants to let down Michelle? Nobody, that’s who… WHAT DIFFERENCE DID IT MAKE?!?
I used this photo in my last blog, but it was too perfect to not use again. Feel free to make your own funny caption. This one writes itself…
And then, it came to me. I figured why it matters that Trump’s hands are small, and pointing that out is an important thing to do. Hear me out…
I’d choose this SNL character for president before I’d vote for the one we have.
I’m bald. Not COMPLETELY bald… Like most men who have gone bald, I still have a little bit of hair around the sides. UN-like most men, I can grow a kick ass full beard in NO time, baby… But I digress. There is no denying it… I’m bald. So imagine that someone said about me, “Hey, that guy is bald!” I’d be like, “Yup, I don’t have very much hair left… You’re right.” Because that’s what normal people do. I might make a joke and say something about how “I think God took away my hair because He didn’t feel like it was fair to everyone else for me to be this smart, this funny, AND have a full head of hair.” But if someone called me bald, and then I went on and on with some deranged rant about how “I HAVE THE BEST HAIR!” when clearly my hair was mostly gone, I would be showing a serious mental deficiency. One that is so serious, it should probably keep me out of office. Hell, it should probably keep me out of MOST jobs.
And I get that he is sensitive about this. It started over 30 years ago, with a man named Graydon Carter (who is now the editor of Vanity Fair). In THIS FASCINATING ARTICLE, Carter recalls Trump sitting next to a model named Vendela. Here is an excerpt…
I sat Trump beside Vendela, thinking that she would get a kick out of him. This was not the case. After 45 minutes she came over to my table, almost in tears, and pleaded with me to move her. It seems that Trump had spent his entire time with her assaying the “tits” and legs of the other female guests and asking how they measured up to those of other women, including his wife. “He is,” she told me, in words that seemed familiar, “the most vulgar man I have ever met.”
In 1988, Carter wrote an article about Trump where he called him a “short-fingered vulgarian.” By all estimations, this really got under Trump’s thin skin. So much so that, every so often over the last few decades (and as recently as 2015), Trump has sent Carter pictures of himself, cut out of magazines, with his hands circled in gold Sharpie, with a note that says, “See? Not so short.“ Again, I ask you: What kind of person does this?
I can’t even SEE his stubby fingers because all I can look at is how his eyes and mouth are interchangeable…
So listen. Clearly. CLEARLY this dude has extra small hands. No big deal. But, CLEARLY. Except that he has spent a ridiculous amount of time defending his hands as not being small. He held them up to be examined during a presidential debate, desperate to refute the claims of their smallness. He defended their size when he alluded to the size of his penis during a nationally televised debate, drawing on a mythical correlation. And honestly, if this blog post went super viral, I would not be AT ALL surprised if he sent his Press Secretary out to defend the size of his hands to the American people.
How do you describe this as anything but CRAZY?
What healthy-minded, small-handed people do when someone points out how small their hands are, is they say, “Yeah, they are a bit small.” Maybe they make a joke… Maybe not. But what they DON’T do is they don’t start demanding that the facts are not the facts. And this is what Donald Trump does. About everything. He did it about his hands, he did it about the number of people at the inauguration, and he has done it multiple times now about the numbers of the popular vote. THIS IS WHY PICTURES OF HIS TINY HANDS BEING DWARFED BY MELANIA’S HANDS ARE IMPORTANT TO TALK ABOUT. Not because bigger hands mean more strength and virility. Not because we’re trying to be cruel (though I believe it’s important to keep forcing him to see that SO MANY in this country disapprove of him). But because FACTS MATTER. And this is just one more piece of evidence that the man we elected as president is unfit for the presidency. I genuinely believe that he is not right in the head. Dangerously so. And I don’t mean that in a way that diminishes the worth and value of people struggling with mental illness. I say it in the same way that I would not want a person who is blind flying a plane… Especially a plane that is carrying 350 million people.
This administration is trying to sell us “alternative facts.” But alternative facts have a name… They’re called “lies.” When Trump tries to pass along those miniature sausages as “normal-sized” fingers, he is functioning in the realm of alternative facts. And alternative facts are lies. Stop lying.
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