Peter Lynch, who managed Fidelity Investment’s wildly successful Magellan Fund during the 1980s, had a famous adage about the companies he invested in: You want to own shares in a company whose business is so secure that an idiot could run it. Because eventually, one will.
My friends are decompensating, as the shrinks like to say, about Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency. I am not. This is the moment that Peter Lynch predicted, and we hope our company, the United States of America, is secure enough to weather the incoming chief executive. We shall see.
In the interim, I am turning my attention to an odd and I suspect bootless preoccupation of opponents of the new regime: Trumpcotting.
Well before the election, there was a movement to boycott Trump’s casino, real estate, and clothing businesses. Activists likewise urged consumers to shun the sponsors of Trump’s television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,’’ e.g., Enterprise Rent-a-Car and Dr Pepper Snapple Group. Like all boycotts, this one excited mixed emotions in me: Not drink Dr Pepper, with that alluring mystery flavor that the company insists is not prune juice? Frankly, that is asking a lot.
Just last week, hundreds of tenants of Trump Place, three apartment towers on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive, successfully petitioned to delete the T-word from their buildings. Linda Gottlieb, who led the petition drive, likened the process to a latter-day exorcism: “To me, it feels like a cleansing of the place where I live.’’
It has been revealed that watching “Seinfeld’’ reruns is an indirect way of putting money in the pocket of Steve Bannon, Trump’s alt-right strategist who has secured a posh office in the Trump West Wing. One of Bannon’s businesses bought syndication rights to “Seinfeld’’ in the 1990s, a deal that enriched him, over time.
But not watching “Seinfeld’’ is hard, as I learned on Tuesday night, waiting for TNT’s massively over-hyped “Good Behavior’’ to come on the air. I binge-watched the first four episodes of “Seinfeld’’ season nine, and they were quite funny. How not to love Lloyd Bridges’s star turn as Izzy Mandelbaum, the personal trainer that time forgot?
Things may get worse before they get better. Boston-based sneaker and apparel manufacturer New Balance found that out when spokesman Matthew LeBretton dared to voice approval for Trump’s opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal: “The Obama administration turned a deaf ear to us and frankly, with President-elect Trump, we feel things are going to move in the right direction.’’
Whoa Nellie! The social media Stigma Machine kicked into high gear as sneaker owners posted videos of tossing their footwear into wastebaskets, or setting them on fire. New Balance hastily backtracked, explaining that the company “supported the trade positions of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump prior to Election Day that focused on American manufacturing job creation and we continue to support them today.’’
But here comes the real test of Trumpcotting. You remember who trumpeted their Donald Love from the rooftops on Election Day: Messrs. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Trump name-checked them in New Hampshire, a Patriots-leaning state that he lost but certainly could have won. So will you Trumpcott all Patriots games, including the playoffs, which promise to be both interesting and possibly fruitful for the Patriots?
Not me! I’m the notorious Dr Pepper drinker, “Seinfeld’’ watcher, and all-out fan of the Patriots, except when they let pint-sized quarterbacks like Russell Wilson run wild in the backfield. Maybe I’ll take up jogging again. My New Balance sneakers are gathering dust in the closet.
Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.
