THINGS I SCRIBBLED WHILE SAILBOATING: THE CAVERNICOLOUS DWELLINGS OF SLAPDASH COMMUNICATION…

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Dear Donald Francis,
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I will assume that by now, you are fully aware that the most famous man on the planet has done a (not so)secretive interview with the rambunctious Piers Morgan.
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I, for myself, expect nothing less than a “festival” of “whinging” and cringing “lamentations”, “victimizations” and harrowing down-market “spin” to “spout” out of the princely, prissy  and (overly) prickly “bellyacher” that he is. And likely… always has been. Although at times, underneath a substantial “coat” of media coaching “makeup” in order to protect his profitability.
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When it is all added up and accounted for, I suspect that the credibility and intellectual(…) honesty of the interviewee will be challenged and questioned. And in all likelihood, more so than at any time in the past. Besides, in the “Old Albion” they’ve never truly respected the figure of “Johnny Foreigner“. And after what eventuated in Group A of the Euro 2000, who can blame them?
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I’ll entertain it, and hope for the odd chuckle (“tout court“), even if just for a fleeting moment (or two…).
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Back in 1997 I had laser surgery on my eyes, and since then, the degradation has been residual. My ears are functional enough, and my brain has, in my estimation, never worked better. When you summate all these predicates up, it means I’m (steadily)listening, watching, reading and (even if subconsciously) memorizing it all, be it aurally or visually.
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And amidst the many empirical learnings that I have been “subjected” to, I was taught early on, that we should never broach matters that we do not dominate in a fairly “highbrow” fashion
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They say, that one the markers of “eruditism”, is the way in which someone expresses himself. How “mountainy” is his/her/it vocabulary. Does he/she/it  employ words in their proper context.. Does he make (underprivileged) use of inappropriate metaphors or resort to an inelegant syntax? Conversely, does he(or she, or “it”) have a habit of interjecting quotations (exempli gratia… Picasso‘s) of others in a nonsensical context or frame of reference? Perhaps. Perhaps…
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There is nothing sadder or more unbecoming than an ugly man who fancies himself as beautiful, other than a “functional illiterate” (or… his immediate family) who sprinkles references to Picasso, Camões, Gandhi (been reading the Sanskrit much, have they?), Pascal and other luminaries, in an (ill-advised) attempt to sound like a (scarcely)better-scrubbed, hustling “hillbilly” (indigenous to the blighted public housing at Santo António‘s skid row), who just happened to hit the “footballistic lottery“.
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When you do not have real (executive) power, you should always and without exception, delay your decision-making process. And when you do not have anything worth listening to, one should remain silent. Nothing comes across as more akin to wisdom than a silent and observing “rube” (even the Alentejanas…). These would be the rational decisions.
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But when their emotions override their brains(…), there’s only so much that can be done or “coached”, even when they’re surrounded by a cadre of equivalents to a Ted Sorensen, a Donald Draper, a David Ogilvy, a Lee Atwater, a Roger Ailes, a Karl Rove, a Duarte Cordeiro, a Gonçalo Matos Ramos, or any other “intellectual blood banks” ever-present to fine tune and polish the rough edges. Truth be (well) told… “you can lead a horse (or jackass..) to water, but you just can’t make it drink it.”
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I have often in the past seeked the counselling of lawyers and doctors, over matters on which I did not have enough confidence in my own erudition. I have always respected and listened to them attentively and humbly assumed my “inferiority”.
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Sometimes, beforehand… I made my own “diagnostics” (and plotted my own strategy) healthwise that ended up revealing a noticeable degree of “paranoia“, pessimism and overly complicated assessments, which just goes to show me, how one needs differing perspectives.
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In other predicaments, I have entered their offices already fully-determined into following my predetermined course of action.
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But once they told me “don’t do it, Ronnie!” or “Ronald… don’t get yourself into that“, I was swiftly moved and disadvised by their “scholarly ascendancy”.
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After all… at the end of the day… when all is said and done (that’s quite enough with the Idioms…), what’s the point of seeking (and remunerating) learned admonition, if you’re just going to reveal yourself as impervious and nonporous to their forewarnings and persuasions?
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I think it’s natural that Cristiano has a lot of confidence in himself, but… he should not attempt to “transpose” it into other “jurisdictions”, such as communications, spin, or public relations.
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I have met many a “Kings” in my time, and I’ve always been able to foretell which would last, and which would not. The deep-rooted ones are those who surrounded themselves with smart people in a room, respected them, listened to them, and were able to delegate authority and “latitude” to them.
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Conversely, some “monarchs”, when they sit on the “chair of power“, it alters them psychically. They become convinced of their omniscience, invulnerability, immortality, and so forth. Basically, they start acting like supercilious “drunks”, and some, with “firewaterish intonations” to match the (loutish)”persona”.
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And as a result of that illusory self-belief in their “almightyness” and infallibility, they proceed to make mistakes. Lots and lots of missteps and tumbles, until they fall permanently onto the street where the awaiting “mob” greets them with “murderous affection”. They  dwindle into obscurity (from whence they came…) victims of their own stupidity and bedazzlement with their “power”.
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My father always told me that a good night’s sleep is often the best counselling before making belligerent decisions. And indeed, we often get into heated discussions with sarcastic and bad-faithed bastards (or “bastardettes“), and naturally, adrenalin takes over and subjugates our neurones into permitting us to communicate with little more than senseless rubbish.
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Emotivity is often the “squire” for the doomed “knight” who trots along into battle, armed with too much bravery and too little in the way of a warring  blueprint.
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Sure, Ronaldo is/was a magnificent athletic specimen, but not all (actually, most of it) that comes out of his mouth is any kind of “engravable insight”.
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I feel that it is only proper that he should love and believe in himself. I too love myself while toiling away in the shadows. I have been doing my utmost to start planting the understructure of my own legend. But… it would be foolhardy and indiscreet of me, to speak of it before itself attains a degree of firmness and universal acceptance in a time to (hopefully) come.
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To believe is paramount, to speak ahead of schedule… it is not!
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Were all the inconveniences to his ego really the trigger to precipitate an occasion to go bantering about with Piers? As usual, he seems to be turned on to the company of those that never question him, and mostly choose to aggrandize him and soothe his overbearing self-admiration.
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Nothing good will come of this, I feel…
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Once Ronaldo had decided on his present course of what some will feel is a dishonest pantomime, whose sole purpose it to be dispensed with by his paymasters, why did none of his “handlers” (or “footmen” who I (in jest) assume fetch his slippers and newspaper in the early hours of the crack of dawn) stopped him from further blackening his reputation? (Goodness) Gracious, does he ever need help, and an entourage  that is positioned a little bit higher up in the “competence hierarchy“…
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Even with his pre-chosen rhetoric, more might have been done to sustain it with a well-rehearsed performance. Henry David Thoreau once said (or wrote) that “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.” But what is the “substructure” for all of this theatricality?
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Some might say or think that there’s only so much (communicative) talent to work with in him. But as Konstantin Stanislavski would put it, “There are no small parts, only small actors“. And I fear that as a communicator, Ronaldo is not up to par with his namesake Ronald(Reagan).
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I think that the message being put out will mostly present him to the world as a bitter and embittered soul, the likes of which… I myself could well do without his negativity, “delusions”, gratuitously “mean-spirited” jibes, and that which many a people may very well come to interpret as “deceptions” or even outright “lies”.
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His has (up until recently) mostly been a life of awe and wonder, after many years of grinding about. And I cannot help but to attach weight to the notion that what he built in years of gym work and kitchen table discipline, is now being undone by “cowhearted” and “doormatish” subservience (or ignorance) by those within his social-professional enclosure or “palace court“.
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Where did he find these obsiquious “liegemen“? The game plan (assuming that there is one), it all comes across like it’s been put together in such a “slapdash” and bare-boned framework… If these servants of his are the industry’s “dernier cri“, then the whole   communication consultancy “anticary” is in a considerable heap of trouble by being “serviced” by such “baseborned gents“. Half of whom, somewhat resemble discotheque barmen from somewhere in Minho.
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I’m not even going to be opinionated over his fat-bottomed betrothed “olive-oil’s-woman“.
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Don, you once said that you used to be lazy in your adolescence, and things might’ve been different had you at least finished high-school. I get a similar vibe these days coming from the suburban village of Woodford. Things might well be different… if “he” had the discernment to surround himself with a qualified and dauntless “cabinet”.
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It does not take an IQ of 157 in order to give sensible and logical admonishments. It just requires common sense applicable to the matter at hand, and a modicum of “gonadish fortitude” to stand up to the boss, for his own well-being (and that of his “sycophantic court“).
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I’ve seen it all before at Club level in Lisbon (I’ve been vacationing near a place called “Cabo Ruivo“), where the subordinates often only related the “rosier headlines” to the President, giving him a more positive (and utopic) outlook on the state of the institution.
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Oh well, let us at least hope that John Ashbrook does not get the nomination come June next.
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Give my love to Bethany and the kids, and be sure to have the rest of a pleasant and productive week’s work.
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Wallack’s Point, Connecticut,
Wednesday, November 16th, 2022,
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Text: Ronald William Miller
Images: All rights reserved.
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Post-Scriptum: I do hope my brand of English was readable. I have been watching a lot of Bonanza to brush up on it, so here’s hoping that I spruced it up well enough.
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