By Bob Gaydos

Trump snoozing at the pope’s funeral.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Someone once told us that. Either a Chinese or Japanese philosopher, playwright Henrik Ibsen or some advertising mogul named Fred Barnard back in 1921. Barnard credited the Japanese. I’m going with Confucius. Whoever was first, they all knew what they were talking about.

Of all the words written about Donald Trump’s appearance at the funeral of Pope Francis — how he tastelessly wore a shiny blue suit and blue tie to stand out in the field of black mourners, ignoring the dress protocol issued by the Vatican, how he staged a photo op with Ukrainian president  Volodymyr Zelinsky, surely pretending to broker a peace plan in Ukraine — none was more informative and symbolic of the Trump presidency than the image of him sitting there in the front row, next to an impeccably dressed Melania, sound asleep

At the funeral. Of the pope.

Make America embarrassed again.

Of course, if you depended on major newspapers in this country to inform you about that little bit of clumsy protocol, you’d be out of luck. No pictures. Not even words. No nothing.

But someone had the pictures because they were all over social media and YouTube and there he was, “Dozing Donald,” snoozing in the front row at the pope’s funeral. Of course, even here the bets were hedged. With the steady media normalizing of his erratic behavior, Trump only “seemed“ to be sleeping. That’s what everyone seemed to say. Well, it seemed to me that there was no doubt the dotard was dozing.

Just look at the photos. There he is front and center, all in shiny blue, chin dropped to his chest, eyes comfortably closed, mouth dropped wide open. Been there, done that. That’s the picture of a man deep in sleep, not in thoughts about the death of a beloved spiritual leader. In fact, not even able to fake it

But the New York Times, while taking pains to point out Donald’s attire and Melania’s, didn’t bother with a Sleepy Don. Too normal apparently. Nothing strange about that. That’s Trump.

Yet I seem to remember not so long ago when the public behavior of a president was all over the front pages of the daily newspapers in this country. Joe Biden, the president who rescued America from the depths of insanity and economic chaos of the Trump presidency, the man who served honorably as vice president of this country before that and decades as a United States Senator before that — that Joe Biden — the one with a stutter, wound up being called Sleepy Joe thanks to much of the press following the lead of Trump.

Biden was pressured not to run for reelection. Too old. Can’t handle it. That Joe Biden had the grace to step aside and let someone else run against Trump, who thought he could win the election if Elon Musk could steal enough votes from Democrats in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, which he could. That Joe Biden managed to stay awake through the entire funeral of Pope Francis because he has empathy and compassion and respect for other people’s feelings. Trump does not. But we all know that, right? So it’s no big deal, right?

Wrong.

You know, looking at the photo of Dozing Donald, I wondered what was going through Melania’s mind. As far as I know, she never once threw an elbow into his ribs, as the wife in any normal marriage might, and whisper, “Wake up, stupid!” Maybe she thought that with all the cameras around it might draw attention to him. Or maybe, she just really didn’t care at this point. The second seems more likely to me.

Heck, most of the major media didn’t seem to care. That’s Trump, they say. He’s 78 years old. He’s weird. He rambles on and on nonsensically because he doesn’t understand questions. He lies compulsively. He’s a convicted felon and apparently a racist. He almost crashed the stock market and blames Ukraine for Russia invading it. He’s forbidden to be associated with any charitable organization in New York State and ran a phony college. A judge said that what Trump did to a woman in the dressing room of a fancy Manhattan clothing store amounted to rape. He incited an attack on the United States Capitol and encouraged the hanging of his vice president. He was handed the most powerful military and most vibrant economy on the planet when he took office in January and has proceeded to make a mess of both. He insists that windmills kill whales and thinks Hannibal Lecter is a real person.

So he fell asleep at the funeral of the pope. That’s Trump. Who cares?

I care, dammit, that’s who.

 By Michael Kaufman

I’ve known for a long time that The New York Times often falls short of its boastful claim to provide readers with “all the news that’s fit to print.” The Times has dropped the ball on any number of important issues over the years, including such weighty issues as the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But it has also dropped the ball on less weighty, but nonetheless irksome, matters, exemplified by its biased coverage of New York’s two major league baseball teams. And frankly, I’m sick of it.

Wednesday afternoon the Mets completed a three-game sweep of the San Francisco Giants, defending World Series champions and a contender for first place in the National League West. It was the 16th win in the last 25 games for the Mets and was especially noteworthy for the outstanding pitching of rookie right-handed hurler Zack Wheeler. Marlon Byrd, who hit a grand-slam home run in Tuesday’s game, hit a two-run homer Wednesday. The 35-year-old veteran outfielder has been a key contributor to the recent success of the team, with his glove and fine throwing arm as well the bat.

Another veteran, Omar Quintanilla, has been making spectacular plays at shortstop since taking over for the injured Ruben Tejada, and has also delivered a number of clutch hits with men on base (though none Wednesday). So what was the headline Thursday in the Times article about Wednesday’s game? “In Managing Harvey’s Innings, the Mets Make an All-Star Allowance.” Huh? The first 16 paragraphs of the article dealt with a topic that had already been widely discussed for days, namely that the Mets planned to rest their All-Star pitcher Matt Harvey during the final games before the All-Star Game, presumably in the hope that he would be named starting pitcher for the National League in the game Tuesday night at Citi Field. This is certainly an interesting topic and I have my own thoughts about it too—but it is not what I want to be reading about for the first 16 paragraphs of an article about Wednesday’s game by beat writer Andrew Keh. Even the Times Herald-Record, which hasn’t assigned beat writers to the Yankees and Mets for years (and which also has a long history of favoring the Yankees) got it right in their headline above a workmanlike article produced by the Associated Press: “Clean sweep for Zack, Mets, Wheeler mows down Giants.”

The Times’ bias against the Mets has been blatant all year.  Both the Yankees and Mets opened the season at home April 1. The Mets won their game against the San Diego Padres by a score of 11-2.  The Yankees lost to the Boston Red Sox, 8-2. The next day, the Times article about the Mets game was about a third the size of the article about the Yankees game. And, as noted in an email from Tad Richards (poet, director of Opus 40, and Mets fan) “It’s mostly about what a terrible team the Mets are and they can’t expect to have too many days like this. Instead of writing about what Cowgill and Byrd did in the game, they wrote about what they did last year. And, well, I could go on and on, but ‘Bleep the New York Times’ covers it.” (Only he didn’t say “Bleep.”)

Tad’s email, sent to a small cadre of Mets fans scattered across the country, drew unanimous agreement. After the Mets swept a four-game series from the Yankees in May, it was Tad’s daughter Caitlin who wrote, “Why can’t we get any respect?  We just swept the Yankees for the first time in history, we played four great games, yet the Times articles are making excuses for the Yankees rather than applauding the achievements of the Mets. They were amazing. Let them have their moment.” Peter Jones agreed, noting, “The Times treats the Mets as if they were from Boston.” To which Tad added, “More like as if they were from Poughkeepsie.”

But I think Jon Richards, Tad’s brother (film critic, cartoonist for Huffington Post, and co-author of Nick and Jake) who may have said it best: “The Times sees the Yankees as the pinstriped Lords of Wall Street, and the Mets as the poor outerborough slobs who lose their house even if they’re paid up on their mortgage.”

Michael can be reached at michael@zestoforange.com.