Is Terry Bradshaw running for president?
With the culture virtually boiling in bad news, basic rules of survival would dictate that we seize upon anything resembling a positive development, which I’m certain is how you view the announcement that Terry Bradshaw is getting a new reality show.
I mean thank God, right? Yeah, we can breathe again.
His last one, “Better Late Than Never,” found the Steelers icon “roughing it” along the Pacific Rim with William Shatner, Henry Winkler, George Foreman and comic Jeff Dye, munching exotic delicacies and tending to their bucket lists, none of which were interesting enough to sustain it past two seasons.
But now, in addition to his NFL studio, acting, and spokesmodel responsibilities, Terry’s back to reality TV with “The Bradshaw Bunch,” a new venture on E! in which the old quarterback and his large family cavort through some real life low-jinks around balancing the three F’s — football, fame, and farm life.
“Doggone it Tammy, I gotta watch all this tape on the Chargers defense and I still got that dang tractor to fix,” I imagine Terry saying to his fourth wife.
“Don’t worry. honey,” Tammy might retort. “I’ll watch that tape for you.” It’s comedy gold.
But there might be more at work here.
With all of Bradshaw’s myriad responsibilities, why would a 71-year-old man recommit to the grind of producing top-flight cable television? The answer came to me like a classic Bradshaw dart down the middle, true and with plenty of zip: Terry Bradshaw is running for president.
Reality TV is, after all, the way to the White House from here on out, it would appear.
Caucuses, schmaucuses. You gotta be a star first, and we’ll ask questions later. We’ll even promise not to ask which state Kansas City is in.
Terry can do this. I’m certain of it. He’s glib, gregarious, positive and possessed of a kind of homespun charm that can be marketed into a vote magnet. Does he know anything about anything important? Please. That qualification is so 19th century.
But there’s plenty of competition from the same launch angle, and it might not help the man who triggered the Immaculate Reception that his film credits include “Failure to Launch,” a 2006 vehicle with Hollywood mega-talents Matthew McConaughey and Kathy Bates that included a nude scene for old No. 12, by the way. That, coupled with his full-frontal action on “Better
Late Than Never” probably should have prevented E! executive veep Rod Aissa from blurting, “He’s the glue that holds that family together, and we’re excited that viewers will really get to see a side of him that they’ve never seen before.”
Actually, some voters might still struggle to unsee some, uh, things.
Bradshaw is surely not the only Reality TV legend thinking of turning 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue into “Jersey Shore.” As I write this, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino might already be fantasizing about becoming the first president to take the oath of office shirtless.
Sorrentino was freed from prison in September after doing most of a year for felony tax evasion, which I’m guessing when it comes to the presidency is no longer a deal breaker. He’s still on probation, but again, no biggie.
A more serious Reality TV candidate would be Omarosa Maginault-Newman, a onetime agitator in the early days of President Donald Trump’s “Apprentice” franchise. She actually has experience in two administrations: The current one, in which she lasted nearly 12 months as an assistant in the Office of Public Liaison; and Bill Clinton’s, where she worked for Vice President Al Gore. She was subsequently transferred to the Commerce Department and was reportedly dismissed for being “unqualified and disruptive.”
Unqualified and disruptive? She’s perfect! It’s a new paradigm.
Still, the White House probably belongs to Kim Kardashian West if she wants to be the next reality star to be handed the launch codes for mutually assured nuclear winter.
With 63 million Twitter followers, she has nearly as many as the president, and she’s way more sophisticated when it comes to makeup.
Kardashian West was once a punching bag for those horrible media elites, but she has come a long way from the days of her careerlaunching sex tape and that time she offered to have her butt X-rayed to prove there were no implants. Today, she’s an earnest law student who has lobbied the White House on prison reform and secured the release of a Tennessee woman who was serving a life sentence for her part in a cocaine ring.
Thus the case can be made that she has converted herself into a serious person, and a serious person who has earned some serious money — more than $53 million annually at one point — doing whatever it is that she does.
Given the current landscape, I’m kind of rooting for Bradshaw. He’d be the first president with four Lombardi Trophies and multiple nude scenes. “Silver Linings Playbook II” is practically casting itself.