By Tony Deyal
From its inception, this arrangement was an ethical morass. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was a top White House official during Trump’s first term. After exiting the White House in 2021, Kushner launched a new private equity firm, Affinity Partners. From its inception, several experts considered it an “ethical morass.”
I also heard the same term “morass” when an 11-year-old Trinidad boy, Ezekiel Paria, was shot dead during a drive-by. It was in a letter to the Editor of a local newspaper, Newsday, by Trinidadian country director, Marlon Boscombe. He was so upset he asked, “…just what it will take for us citizens to lift ourselves from the morass of our current circumstance.”
While Trump and his son-in-law were deep into “morass” than most other people in the world, it was still unusual to hear “morass” unless was from a teacher threatening a student, or a husband (or wife) trying to beat the “skit” out of the other. I immediately loved the word “morass” and so full of it, that I almost fell into a morass myself. This term, though, is used literally to refer to an area of soft, wet ground. While it comprises marshes or swamps, it includes bogs, fens, wires, sloughs and everglades. There is even a “bayou” that requires “morass” than I can buy. In other words, a “morass”, as used by Trump and his son, means “an unpleasant, confusing and complicated situation that is difficult to get out of or move through.” It is what they use to amass all the money they make.
But enough of Trump and his son for the time being. We in the Caribbean, when we hear about “cutass” or “morass”, want to know right away whether we should run or stand up. In other words, you need to work out whether you are being assailed by a lesser assassin of a lower class, or you’re facing someone with a “picker to jook you.” In other words, you must access if it is “lick-ass” or you’re going to be assieged. This sounds crass, but in the circumstances, especially if politicians are involved, it might pass as class.
Worse, if you do something causing people to leave their house and run, it might just be crass on their part or someone pelting glass or letting out gas. That is known as “Hitting Rock Bottom.” As the great comedian Will Rogers said, “Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.” In fact, Rogers made it clear, “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”
The British director, Adam Curtis, went even further: “Nobody trusts anyone in authority today. It is one of the main features of our age. Wherever you look, there are lying politicians, crooked bankers, corrupt police officers, cheating journalists and double-dealing media barons, sinister children’s entertainers, rotten and greedy energy companies, and out-of-control security services.” In other words, “Morass” is a complicated and confusing situation in some cases, this occurs when your girlfriend catches you looking for morass and threatens to leave yours or cut it in pieces.
Worse if you hear cussing like a downtown “hoe” (or lady of the night) about hauling your “Rass”, or one without the “r”, and you end up in both morass and no class. If you do, you will have to pay for assault or assoil. My school friends used to tell me when I made jokes at their expense, “Haul your ‘mud-ass’. It was meant to make sure the teacher couldn’t tell the principal they were “cussing.”
We used to play with even worse jokes. I suppose that growing up in the cane fields and having animals we knew about molasses, but more asses? One of my friends, as a joke, came to school on a Monday morning boasting, “I got “morass” than you this weekend!” The worst was one aimed at the school principal who was very fat. both front and back, “What do you call someone with two asses instead of one?” The response, “Biased” became his nickname but never loud enough for him to hear. One of my Canadian university friends came up with, “I told my girlfriend that I’ve got a thing for asses, and she didn’t approve, she got really angry.”
He then added: “To be fair, I should have just said that I own a stable.” What I eventually found extremely funny was that Australians were big in the morass and had “The Morass: Servant of the Fly God” (a terrifying descent into a nightmarish scenario) and “The Morass Men.” Interestingly, not too very far away from there, 70-80 percent of the men in American Samoa and Nauru are living with obesity.
However, the Brits and Yankees, especially the politicians, take the cake, bread and food for thought. It’s not just “dark chocolate” but white ones as well. A few years ago, in the United Kingdom (UK), Conservative Party voters were more likely to be living with obesity than those who voted Labour. One of their MPs, Conor Burnes, claimed the US was the fattest country in Europe.
But the British Oxford University found that American adults have worse cardiovascular health and higher levels of obesity than their British counterparts because they eat more calories than they burn, and the excess energy is stored as fat. This leads in both the US and UK to morass than anyone else and it is obvious in their Hansard, “Mouth-sard” and “Belly-sard”. Just to show you how bad it is, here are some from Hansard. These include, “You have put them on morasses where you could not get a foundation.”; “We are trying now to build a vision on a legal morass.”; “We shall be back again in a morass of futility.”; and, “Indeed, we seem to be up a blind alley in a morass of bad faith, bad tempers and lack of trust.”
Of course, the lawyers, doctors and big-shots get what they deserve, “How is any citizen- trader, worker, or whoever is concerned – to find his way through the morass of the law?” and “Are not the doctors themselves to blame for having been led into the morass in which they find themselves?” Here is one on behalf of all of us, “The little man never seems to be able to find a way of solving the problem; it is just a morass.” My favourite, to end with, “Finally, there is the horror of our alleged moral sense, which ironically leads us into endless moral morasses.” As one person wrote, “What did the dad say when he saw the parliament was full of birds?” His response was, “This is a parliament most fowl indeed…” The best one though is, “The Houses of Parliament is like an orgy. A lot of pricks standing around desperate to get attention.”
*Tony Deyal laughed when he learnt that if the opposite of “pro” is “con”, and the opposite of “progress” in “congress”, then “Constitution” will turn into “Prostitution.”
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