Fibber McGee’s Closet
In March 1940 on a radio show called “Fibber McGee and Molly,” the audience would burst into laughter when Fibber McGee opened the door to his overstuffed closet, and everything from golf clubs to roller skates and old lampshades would come tumbling out. After the noise subsided, a resigned Fibber McGee would say, “I gotta clean out that closet one of these days.”
The gag became a popular joke, making the show a fixture in American culture. Playing Fibber and Molly, comedians Jim and Marian Jordan, receiving guests in their mythical home on Wistful Vista, used the gag more than 200 times, elevating Fibber McGee’s closet to a widely used metaphor for chaos and disorder. The gag faded from the American lexicon after the show closed, but President-elect Donald Trump revived the idea when he created a White House Cabinet that resembles Fibber McGee’s closet.
Jim and Marian Jordan as Fibber McGee and Molly, 1948.
With an overstuffed philosophical armoire of extremists, Trump created a Fibber McGee-style Cabinet that contains everything from sexual predators to someone who endorses a conspiracy theory that airplane exhaust is a plot to poison America. They are about to come tumbling out with a cacophony of noise in congressional confirmation hearings that will probably make Fibber McGee look like a neatnik.
In fairness, Trump’s Cabinet picks are accomplished men and women. They have the ear of a president capitalizing on them to stick their thumbs in the eyes of the Washington bureaucracy. A shake-up of the federal government is not all bad. As anyone who has had dealings with Washington can attest, the federal bureaucracy can be a countervailing force that thwarts innovation, rewards the status quo, devises dumb rules and regulations, and is vulnerable to the machinations of lobbyists or the whims of partisan cover-my-ass Congress. Exhibit A is the nation’s dysfunctional healthcare system.
All candidates, from Tulsi Gabbert as Director of National Intelligence to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, will get their day in court to demonstrate that their qualifications go beyond unswerving loyalty to Trump or star roles on the Fox network. That’s assuming that Trump doesn’t succeed in challenging the U.S. Senate constitutional duties to approve all Cabinet appointments. All of his candidates court controversy and face considerable opposition. Sly, entrenched government servants clog the ranks of the bureaucracies the Fibber McGee Cabinet has been tapped to run. Schooled in techniques designed to thwart the nominee’s worst instincts, the entrenched bureaucracy will make it hard for the appointees to match their fiery rhetoric with results.
Although the national press will no doubt obsess with the noise the nominees generate in congressional hearings, the candidates that deserve most of the scrutiny are those who may not be thoroughly questioned by anyone. Elon Musk, a leading figure in Silicon Valley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a technology entrepreneur, could make the most noise tumbling from Fibber McGee’s Cabinet. Considered high priests of the high tech ruling class, Musk and Ramaswamy will lead a new department called DOGE, an acronym for Department of Government Efficiency.
DOGE, ironically named after one of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrencies, will operate outside the traditional government framework and won’t be required to win congressional approval because of its advisory status. Although it is envisioned to promote government efficiency, it’s a good bet that its staff will include the high priests’ hand-picked associates. They will have the ear of the White House and the Office of Management and Budget — a powerful, opaque federal office that can quietly strangle any program it doesn’t like.
Musk and Ramaswamy unquestionably have power and fans rarely question their techniques. It’s no secret that Musk helped create the global electric car market. He became the world’s richest man, giving him the resources to buy his way into the Trump world and the Republican party. Ramaswamy, a relatively youthful biotech entrepreneur, co-founded a high-stakes venture designed to acquire and develop drugs neglected by Big Pharma. Both men will bring some long-overdue scrutiny to a good old boy network that helps line pockets at the expense of an overtaxed public.
But the press should give Musk and Ramaswamy just as much scrutiny as Gabbert, Kennedy, and Hegseth. The high priests of high tech have had their low moments. The public deserves to know more about them despite their inclination to control the conversation. Musk doesn’t have the Midas touch many ascribe to him. He’s obviously failed to make Twitter, which he’s renamed as X, a profitable company. He’s pumped billions of dollars of his and other people’s money into X only to make the online platform his personal misinformation machine. Moreover, he’s on his way to wrecking Tesla, the one-time wunderkind of electric cars.
Tesla’s pioneering Model S sedan hasn’t changed much since Tesla unveiled the car in 2012. All models of Teslas are plummeting in resale value, and the “self-driving” car he touts can’t seem to turn the proverbial corner. At one point recently, Tesla laid off its’ team in charge of Superchargers, the ultra-fast charging network with more potential to earn money than pipe dreams about cars without drivers. After an uproar from Tesla owners and other automobile companies with agreements to use the network, Tesla apparently has started rehiring people to maintain the network and honor Tesla’s commitments. Tesla makes no major moves without a nod from Musk. Public interest demands more scrutiny for an unelected wheeler-dealer operating in an opaque department with the potential to impact millions of American lives.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve owned four Teslas and still have some of the company’s stock. I sold or traded three of them and speak from personal experience. Tesla is not the company or the stock it once was.
Ramaswamy, too, faced many challenges in his entrepreneurial journey through the biotech world. He co-founded and led Roivant Sciences, which focused on reviving drugs that larger pharmaceutical companies had abandoned to the tangled regulatory web. Known as a demanding leader in the secretive environment of private companies, he thrives in high-pressure atmospheres where he challenges employees to think critically. His style has also led to controversies that leak into the public sphere through lawsuits exposing the downside of his approach.
Although Ramaswamy’s been correctly credited with a successful business career, he’s failed in electoral politics, which is far different than running a business. His quixotic presidential campaign for the Republican 2024 White House nomination went nowhere. Like Musk, he’s also had his business flops. As the CEO and co-founder of Axovant Sciences, he failed to live up to the promise of bringing to market an Alzheimer’s and dementia drug, Intepirdine, which, according to the scientific press, failed to demonstrate significant efficacy in late-stage clinical trials.
Musk and Ramaswamy deserve a chance to make the federal government work better. The nation currently faces an unsustainable and growing debt burden. From all indications, Musk and Ramaswamy will rush to make changes before Americans realize what benefits they stand to lose. Plenty of well-meaning people have come before Musk and Ramaswamy, though, and opened the door to the budget in Fibber McGee’s closet with varying results, so it’s nothing new. The defense budget, Social Security, Medicare, and the interest on the debt will make a lot of noise tumbling out at the feet of Trump’s Fibber McGee’s Cabinet, and, if the past is any indication, the audience will get the last laugh.
—James O’Shea
James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Substack, Five W’s + H here.