As Matt Labash noted a few weeks back, the current frontrunner for the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has a bit of a preoccupation with his micro-digits. After being called a "short-fingered vulgarian" in the pages of Spy, Trump developed a rather ... odd habit:
But the sobriquet stung the thin-skinned Trump badly enough that Graydon Carter, Spy's cofounder and the current editor of Vanity Fair, writes that to this day, he occasionally receives an envelope from Trump, "generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them, he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby." (On Twitter, Trump has called Carter "sloppy," "a disaster," and a "major loser — just ask his wife!") [Emphasis added.]
This is weird, right? Like, if you were making a movie about a serial killer and you wanted to show that he was a real psycho, wouldn't you make a montage of him cutting out photos of himself and circling random body parts that have displeased him? Also, it's not just the cutting out photos of himself—though that's obviously creepy—it's the gold Sharpie. Who owns a gold Sharpie?*
Anyway, contrary to some reports, I don't find Trump's shortcoming "funny" so much as "disturbing." Do we want someone with fingers that stubby on the button? Is he the last remnant of some sort of pre-human tribe?
Most importantly: How will this go over with voters in the general? Since I'm a good team player, allow me to suggest a few fixes Trump can adopt in order to make the short-finger issue go away.
Prof. Farnsworth's Fing-Longer
One of the many useless inventions created by Prof. Hubert J. Farnsworth is the "fing-longer." Basically, it's a glove with a long index finger that allows him to point to things while sitting down. While the fing-longer would clearly be an improvement for Trump, one wonders whether it would simply draw attention to the fact that the rest of his digits are so disproportionately small. The next solution seems like a better option for a man of Trump's stature.
Uncle Jack's Hand Gloves
I don't know if you've been watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but it has been pretty genius this season. In one of the episodes, Charlie's Uncle, Jack—a lawyer who is obsessed with his tiny hands—breaks out a pair of hand gloves that makes it appear as if his fingers are large and masculine. Granted, they look a little odd. And they have the tendency to fly off if not properly duct-taped to one's sleeve. But in this life you have to make choices. And it seems to me that there's no choice between freakishly large and freakishly small hands.
A Full Handectomy and Reconstruction
This is obviously the most extreme solution. But the good news is we have the technology! Check it out:
Look: It's not fair that short-fingered vulgarians are looked down upon in our society. It's one of the few remaining acceptable bigotries. Sad! But Trump needs to face reality: the voters will look askance at him until he solves this problem. He shouldn't get angry at Marco Rubio for bringing it up on the campaign trail. He should thank him for highlighting a very fixable flaw.
*The answer to this is "someone who signs a lot of black and white head shots," probably. Another reason not to trust Trump.