‘Reality TV’ and ‘reality’ two different things
I met Donald Trump once, only for a few minutes, but long enough to get a sense of who he was, what he stood for.
It was at the annual TV critics tour in Los Angeles in 2004.
“The Apprentice” had just wrapped its first successful season on NBC and Trump was making the rounds to crow about his reality show triumph to the studiously enthralled press corps.
“I think (season) No. 2 is bigger than No. 1, and No. 1 was a big monster! “he told us at a party on the Universal Studios lot where he effortlessly stole the thunder from a raft of competing celebrities. “The second season of ‘The Apprentice’ is better than the first season … I am better in the second one than I was in the first … I thought I was the biggest star before, but now I’m bigger!”
At that point people were still referring to him as “The Donald,” an affectionate nickname that fell by the wayside somewhere between the time he gave orders to separate migrant parents from their kids at the U.S. border and his shout out to white supremacists as “very fine people.”
And as he made his Nostradamus predictions with a compliant supermodel perched on his elbow (Melania? She didn’t utter a word), then circled back 10 minutes later to gauge our response, there was a sense of Trump as an eager child: endearingly blunt, hungry for approval.
Without the cagey self-monitoring that plague most celebrity interactions, he was a breath of fresh air: open, honest, totally uncensored.
Sixteen years later, as his presidential successor Joe Biden makes plans to forcibly extricate him from the White House after an election loss Trump has refused to concede, it’s clear that the same qualities that made him such a compelling reality star have, in real life, created a monster from which there is seemingly no escape.
As Biden would say: “C’mon, man!” We always knew the Trump presidency would end this way — not with a whimper, but with a loud screechy narcissistic wail, King Lear descending into a pit of madness in a boxy suit and orange toupee.
He had a good run, shook up the status quo, pushed the limits of democracy (and decency), enabled a sociopathic minority and drove up ratings.
But now — like Icarus flying too
close to the sun — he’s been cancelled.
Goodbye Donald: To paraphrase the lyrics of the great Elvis Costello, I used to be amused, but now I’m definitely disgusted.
In pop culture terms, Biden’s return to the White House after two terms as Barack Obama’s veep is like the Season 10 premiere of “Dallas,” where Pam finds Bobby in the shower and the entire previous season — in which he died — is revealed to be a bad dream.
That’s the Trump era in a nutshell, a bad dream that sees Biden picking up the reins as the logical Obama heir after four years of almost surrealistic chaos and disruption.
Why should this matter to Canadians? Because we’re overshadowed by the U.S. in every possible way: culture, business, COVID 19.
Had the Canadian Pacific Railway not created a coast-to-coast connection in the 1880s, we might be part of the U.S. today. What they do affects us.
And when they elected Trump, they made it hard for me to explain to my autistic 12-year-old how a racist/sexist bully who lies, disparages war vets as “losers” and makes fun of people with disabilities could ever become president.
I live with a pro-Biden American. Throughout the five-day election ordeal, as the projected Biden landslide collapsed into a morass of failed expectations before a slim victory was eked out, she walked around shaking her head, unsurprised by the fact the president she loathes managed to hang on to the support of almost half of all Americans.
“Canadians are too quick to stereotype,” she pointed out. “Either you’re a ‘Good American’ or a ‘Redneck Illiterate Racist Trumper.’
“I grew up with so many Republicans who are decent, intelligent and not at all deluded. But a lot of people are worried about government having their paws in their business and erroneously perceive Biden as a socialist instead of the centrist he is. You can’t lump them all in one pot.”
There’s also the John Wayne mythology — the swaggering outsider, morally superior, who stands up for what he believes and, with the force of righteous fury, won’t be denied.
Trump, with his martyrlike refusal to acknowledge election results that cast him as a loser, is the distorted funhouse mirror reflection, or as CNN’s Anderson Cooper described him, “an obese turtle flailing on its back in the hot sun.”
A million years ago, back in 2004, as he made the press rounds to boost his TV show, there was no doubt about Trump’s appeal as a blustery antidote to the constricting confines of prime time.
“I’m a very honest guy,” he insisted in his terse, no-nonsense way. “And someday you may be standing here asking me and I’ll say ‘I don’t think (‘Apprentice’) No. 7 is as good as No. 6, ’ OK? But No. 2 is better than No. 1. And No. 1 finished up No. 1!”
Jump to 2020 and he’s the proverbial sore loser, a Baby-in-Chief spouting conspiracy theories from the bowels of the White House while his eager enablers run around filing bogus lawsuits.
If there’s a lesson here, it’s that “reality TV” and “reality” are two different things.
And sometimes — when you become the first one-term president in three decades — there is no Season 2.