The President has been at it again. This weekend, Donald Trump tweeted a video of himself punching a man whose head had been replaced with the CNN logo, wrestling him to the ground. The video was a bold statement against free speech and a torrent of fake news – but the President’s barber should really have topped his hit list?
In other news, The Donald is allegedly planning on being “sneaked” in to the UK to meet Theresa May this month, in order to avoid protesters, and has recently waged a keyboard war on MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. One tweet in particular crudely referred to Brzezinski as “low I.Q. Crazy Mika”, who was “bleeding from a face-lift.” As expected, the online backlash was unwavering, with one standout tweet from Bill Kristol – Weekly Standard Editor-at-Large and leading proponent of the Iraq War – calling the President “a pig”.
As ever, the President’s actions were entirely deplorable, with Bill Kristol veracious to respond. But the term ‘pig’ isn’t just too kind a word to describe the 45th President of the United States, it’s a severe injustice to the earth’s sounder of swine.
Unlike Donald Trump, the humble pig has garnered a punitive, unjust reputation. Prefixes such as ‘fascist’, ‘selfish’, ‘male chauvinist’, ‘filthy’ and ‘greedy’ have all been famously linked to both parties, yet unfairly so to the four-legged beasts with curly tails.
Physiologically, the pig is most closely linked to humans, known to be caring, sociable, intelligent creatures. Research suggests that pigs are so intelligent, in fact, that they’re level with most three year-old children (or, indeed, 71 year-old Republicans). Against all odds, pigs are also naturally clean animals. Given the freedom to roam, pigs will create separate areas for living, sleeping and eating, and for defecating. Yes, pigs do notoriously bathe in mud, but only to stay cool as they have so few sweat glands. So it’s unlikely that you’ve ever actually been caught “sweating like a pig” on the Bakerloo line.
From a food and drink perspective, pigs are King of the farmyard. Every component is edible, apart from the squeal. Even the bones can be boiled relentlessly for days on end to make unctuous, silky bone broth. In addition to typical cuts such as the tenderloin and chops, the versatility of pork is tremendous, enjoyed all over the world. Particularly popular in Chinese cooking, pork belly is amongst the tastiest of cuts when properly prepared, while offal such as cheeks and trotters (feet) are also popular.
Elsewhere, Spanish charcuterie of long-dried pig is amongst the world’s finest, while slow cooked and shredded shoulder has become the cement of so many barbecue restaurants to settle in London. Lest we forget the dying art form of sausage making; or salty, insalubrious rashers of back bacon – a traditionally British sandwich filler to be proud of. It’s hardly surprising that so many vegetarians attribute their omnivorous conversion to the irresistible smell of bacon cooking.
As for The Donald, even the most starving of Cannibals would struggle to palate a teaspoon of Trump’s rancid blubber, I’m sure. Swine farmers all over the globe will be squealing in terror at the thought of Trump’s Tangoed snout being associated with their high-welfare pork products, reared outdoors or on slatted floors with plenty of nesting, but never in the White House. Christ, even Orwell’s Napoleon and Snowball fail to lower the ‘pig’ branding to Trump’s level.
One of the earth’s most detested figures – if anything, Trump is a tangerine-tinted mosquito, a bloated blobfish with a comb-over, or parasitical leech viciously sucking the life out of the free world. But a pig, he most definitely is not.
