To be, or not to be — in the Oval Office

Prince Hamlet can t make decisions Donald Trump makes too a great number of Imagine Hamlet sitting down in the Oval Office to have one of those dreaded meetings and awkward chats with the leader of the free world It s hard to see a Danish prince click any better with Trump than the presidents of Ukraine or South Africa On the other hand Trump loves a prince as long as he is not called Harry I bet Hamlet and Trump will hit it off as soon as the conversation turns to Denmark Certainly Hamlet has discovered someone who can tell him what s really rotten in his home state And he ll get an earful about Denmark s pathetic defense spending for her colony up north and that Greenland necessities to be liberated and become a U S state just like Canada Also Hamlet is informed there has to be particular serious renaming Whiteland would be much more fitting not just because of the snow but also because Elon Musk s like-colored farmer friends may soon need a safe space as far away from South Africa as achievable The only reason Musk may stick with Greenland is that he eventually demands a place for resettling native Martians after he has populated their planet with his own offspring Which will largest part likely be soon given Elon s eye-popping proliferation rate And yes the arctic island would be open to little green women too but only if their gender was assigned at birth At this point Hamlet s head not just the skull in his hand is in full spinning mode He knows Greenland but what on Earth let alone on Mars is gender The prince of syllabus is a binary kind of guy with a full plate of confusing family problems including a new stepfather who first killed Hamlet s dad and then tells him to stop being a sissy and get over his unmanly grief So much for gender fluidity at the Danish court Henning Schroeder Even if Hamlet has trouble following all the president s points related to Denmark I am sure he can sense that he sits across a fellow Shakespearian character But which one Although not much performed anymore Hamlet may remember that his creator wrote a play about King Henry VIII of England who ran his royal court just like Trump runs his Except that so far inhabitants beheadings have not made it into the president s toolbox for terminating marriages or work contracts Which may explain why compared with the Tudors the Trumps are on much better terms with the pope What I can t explain however is why Shakespeare picked a title for his play about Henry VIII that sounds like it was lifted from a presidential tweet All Is True Henning Schroeder is a professor emeritus who taught in the College of Liberal Arts German Studies and the School of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota The post To be or not to be in the Oval Office appeared first on MinnPost