Attention-starved real estate tycoon and reality television superstar Donald Trump is going to run for president in 2012, according to the media.

Visibly embarrassed after being shamed by The President, The Donald, and The Public at large after seeing the clamp come down on a far-right fringe group called The Birthers, the media establishment gladly passed the mic off to Trump on Wednesday.

“I am so proud of myself because I’ve accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish,” an elated Trump said to a crowd of people cheering, no doubt in anticipation that the billionaire would hand out a thousand-dollar bill with every handshake.

And with that, the 64-year-old businessman who has erected major skyscrapers bearing his name in the majorest of cities became the frontrunning candidate to win the 2012 Republican Presidential primary.

Many media outlets reported that The Birthers stated an intent to scrutinize the document but failed to reference the group’s conclusion as posted on birthers.org Wednesday: “…[f]orgery or not, now we can debate the true meaning of a natural born citizen.” Whatever that means.
In today’s media climate, when even the New York Times mistakes an Onion parody cover of Teen Beat featuring President Obama as the real thing, we’re calling on Donald Trump to fill the L.A. River aqueducts with naturally flowing spring water, fund the salaries of laid-off LAUSD teachers and while he’s at it, to find life on Mars.

Perhaps I’m asking too much. “Obama Castigates Media for Helping to Propagate Racist Myth of His Un-Americanness” is clearly a pathetic, boring headline with poor grammar. There are only so many David Folkenfliks out there to do it right. But these actual headlines are far more hilarious, however fantastical:

• Why Quash the Birthers Now? – NPR, 4/27
• Could Donald Trump win the Republican presidential nomination? – WSJ Question of the Day, 4/28
• Can Trump become more than a ‘birther’ candidate? – Washington Post, 4/28
• Only one news site seemed to catch the “big” surprise on the birth certificate (Obama’s mother’s name is transversed to make her first name “Stanley,” middle name “Ann”) – Philly.com, 4/28
• Donald Trump For President, Says Joey Lawrence Of ‘Blossom’ – HuffPo, 4/28
• Donald Trump offered to take over BP oil spill operation – NOLA.com, 4/27
• Some blacks see racism in ‘birther’ questions – AP, 4/28
• Trump’s NBC colleague Lawrence O’Donnell called The Donald’s behavior an embarrassment to the network – MSNBC, 4/27
• On Twitter and elsewhere, an August 2009 headline from The Onion was reprised: “Afterbirthers Demand To See Obama’s Placenta.”

Thing is, Trump, who hasn’t voted in a primary election in 21 years, doesn’t need to run for president — he already gets more time to say whatever he wants on network TV than all past presidents combined. And do you really think The Donald’s willing to deal with “equal time?!?” Besides, when you’re a multi-billionaire with global influence it doesn’t matter who is president. You’re still rich as sin. Just ask Mike Bloomberg.

Trump, currently a registered Republican, has donated $2.5 million to various political campaigns over the years, according to a Washington Post report. Of those contributions, 54 percent were to Democratic party candidates.

Clearly what’s most important to Trump is his current reality series, Celebrity Apprentice, now going into the final three weeks of its season. There’s nothing Trump wants more than be at the top of NBC’s ratings — especially this week, going up against the final episode of The Office. Even if Trump’s show is stale and the characters are boring, the only thing that matters is what he says about himself on the show (“Trump Mulls Announcement on ‘Apprentice’ – New York Times, April 14). And now he’s got Meatloaf stumping for him.

Donald Trump is a darn clever man, a solid television personality, and a rich rich businessman. I envy him for that and can’t match him there. But if he’s a “possible Republican presidential candidate” like they keep saying on the news…. well then so am I.

This post was syndicated from LAist.com, where I am Associate Editor. A direct link to my LAist.com post index is at the top of my blog. The original post was published on April 28, 2011 at 1:15 p.m.

Ages after every other internet portal and social network went ahead and entrapped the unfocused masses in endless loops of Q and A clickery, your Facebook news feed is probably popping with sophomoric questions right about now.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun — as in funny. I can’t take it seriously. And I’m going to have to make sure this April Fools joke comes to an abrupt end (as soon as somebody tells me how to opt out). Did I think twice before trying out questions? Well, I took a second to take the above screenshot, but then I dived right in. I wanna play! This is the most fun and interactive FB App since Mafia Wars! Look at all those notifications — mostly from people I don’t even know… yet!

But I really felt like I was doing this while trying not to fall asleep in 4th grade Language Arts class or something. ESPECIALLY when Facebook told me that I had to capitalize the first word [sic] of each sentence.

My answer was so dumb it was removed or voted off. So I had to answer another one!

Nice to see Facebook finally reaching out to its under-served high school (and younger) community and to provide some educational value while at it!

So now that I wrote this tongue-in-cheek blog post about Facebook’s latest feature, can I quit it?

Not before I ask.

Check out real Facebook + Media coverage of Q&A here, here, here, and here. I’ll come back to FB Questions if the API proves to really open up the platform and say, enable embedding of questions and polls on this here blog.