By Hannah Reich Berman

 Watching last week’s Republican convention consumed a great deal of my time. In a fashion, it was mesmerizing. At the very start of the convention, there was a lot of screaming and yelling by those delegates who wanted to change convention rules. As loudly as they screamed, their words were pretty much undecipherable, since everybody was drowning out everybody else, making it all but impossible to hear who was saying what. It was of little consequence and nobody cared very much, since there was little doubt that the rules would be changed. Those who were interested in viewing the convention just wanted them to shut up so the actual convention could proceed.

And it was an exciting convention despite some cringe-worthy moments, such as when, on the final day, Ted Cruz spoke but refused to endorse Donald Trump. That was a humdinger of a moment, but not totally unexpected. And, depending on which pundit one listens to, Cruz’s refusal to endorse the candidate will either do him in politically or be totally forgotten in the years to come. Time will tell.

Vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence, a man who is knowledgeable and experienced, was pleasant to listen to. He spoke well but he is not the most exciting of personalities. That, however, doesn’t matter much, since chances are that we will see and hear very little of him, or from him, from here on out. Donald Trump is unaccustomed to being anything but top banana. Some people like to command center stage, but Trump takes it a step further; he does not like to share the stage at all. It has been this way from the beginning. There is no room for anyone else. But it did not work out that way this time, because he was, in a manner of speaking, upstaged! His four eldest children, who spoke over a period of four days, were the real stars. Too bad none of them is running!

They speak well. They spoke their minds and stated their opinions, but we never heard name-calling from any of them. Would that they could teach their father to behave the same way! The biggest puzzlement is why everyone seems to give Donald one hundred percent of the credit for raising these four impressive adults. Melania, Donald’s magnificent-looking wife, who also spoke very well, albeit with a strong accent, seems to get all the credit for raising their son Baron. But the mothers of Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Tiffany were never once mentioned.

If Donald was busy building hotels, golf courses, and other projects, while traveling all over the country and the world, exactly how was he responsible for the upbringing of these kids? Did the first Mrs. Trump, Ivana, and the second Mrs. Trump, Marla Maples, have nothing to do with making their children into the adults that they are today?

Going back to Donald’s current wife, Melania gave a terrific speech but she was accused of plagiarism. Obviously she was not the speechwriter, and the person who did write her speech included a few words that were indeed spoken by Michelle Obama. But there is just so much that can be said by a candidate’s wife. All in all, two, or possibly three, of the same ideas were mentioned, but the speech was a lot longer than two or three thoughts. Probably less than 50 words were the same, and she must have spoken 1,000 or more words that night. It does not sound much like true plagiarism. It certainly did not seem like plagiarism when one considers that the kvetching is being done by Democrats after Joe Biden’s speech was almost entirely plagiarized from Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labor Party. And Obama was busted for plagiarizing Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick in 2008.

The main issue here is that Obama and Biden were presidential and vice-presidential candidates at the time. Melania, on the other hand, is not running for anything. She may well become the First Lady of this nation, but she is not a presidential or even a vice-presidential candidate. So who cares whose words were borrowed by her speechwriter?

This week, if we so desire, we can hear and see the televised Democratic convention. Here goes another four days of hype! Let us hope the four days pass quickly. And after that, all we have to look forward to are four months of back-and-forth promises, accusations, and attacks on one candidate by the other. We can only hope that Trump will control his mouth and that Hillary will refrain from telling any more lies. It is hard to tell which of them is the lesser of the two evils. That, indeed, is a close race!

One can only hope that the time will pass quickly and, most important, that it will pass uneventfully. Our prayer is that terrorist groups will stop their murderous rampages all over the world. Another prayer is that the crazies who are killing police officers will use their heads and realize that the men and women in blue are the people who serve and protect them. It is the police that citizens call when there is a problem. If the leaders of Black Lives Matter would shut their mouths, maybe there would be less inspiration for crazed killers.

Why our president invited that group to the White House is a total mystery. But that pales in comparison to what Obama said a few days ago. At the White House Summit on Global Development last week, he said that we are living in the most peaceful era in human history and the world has never been safer.

It is hard to imagine a more frightening assessment of the world we live in. Thank heavens his presidency is drawing to a close, because the man is either totally delusional or a better liar than his former secretary of state. Sadly, that’s just the way it is. v

Hannah Berman lives in Woodmere and gives private small-group lessons in mah-jongg and canasta. She can be reached at Savtahannah@aol.com or 516-902-3733.

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