American Beat: The Rite To Bear Arms

Yet even the most virtuous and well-deserving need to submit a formal petition asking for a coat. "The process is not complicated," according to the Heraldry Society of Scotland, which then describes dozens of rules, regulations, protocols and pretentious spellings that a would-be arms buyer must follow.

Under the words "I humbly sheweth," Powell must give his full ancestry, accompanied by birth and marriage certificates, a separate "Schedule of Proofs," and an image of his proposed coat of arms.

Oh, and there's the small matter of the check. Given how pretentious it is to get a coat of arms, it's no wonder that "a new grant of armorial bearings" will set Powell back more than $3,500, plus another $1,500 to transfer the coat from his father to him.

The Lord Lyon can still reject the petition, but my sources in Scotland--and when I say "sources," I mean those distillers I met on that whiskey junket last year who keep sending me bottles of single malt that they swipe from the company gift shop; you know, reliable sources!-- tell me that the fix is already in. The Lord Lyon has tentative plans to present Powell with his coat of arms in September (a visit that's clearly timed to swing the election. I can't prove that, of course, but it's pretty obvious that the Republicans are courting the coat-of-arms vote).

At least Powell is doing the right thing. A few years back, Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon and TV star formerly known in the New York press as "the short-fingered vulgarian," decided he needed a coat of arms for his growing casino-hotel-golf empire. Did he go through the process that Powell is now undertaking? Did he follow all the rules of heraldic design? Did he willingly misspell words to satisfy some mace-bearing, in-bred Scottish lord? No. He just paid a graphic designer to throw some symbols together.

And what a coat of arms this is! To call it "tacky" is to insult genuinely tacky people everywhere, people who struggle every day to decide whether to put Miracle Whip or regular mayonnaise on their American cheese and Wonder bread sandwiches. Trump's coat features a shield of ermine (heraldic experts say it's a symbol of royalty), three lions in the rampant pose (a symbol of magnanimity), and an arm sticking out of the top holding a golf club (a symbol of, well, golf).