The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé, Part 4

YouTuber Tashya Tummings had perhaps one of the most interesting quotes of the year on the sneak: "The more public you are, the less talent you have."  If that's the case, then Republican presidential candidate and famed businessman Donald Trump is the most talentless hack in the 2016 presidential election.  Even with the candidates remaining on the GOP side, Senator Ted Cruz or Governor John Kasich aren't the "sexy picks" because they aren't as entertaining as Trump.  Sure, they could write tangible policy in their sleep with their hands tied behind their backs, but because Trump and Cruz have been too busy taking shots at each other's wives and giving news outlets even more fodder, nobody cares.  With the help of the media, Trump has effectively turned the GOP debates and town halls into nothing more than reality television for politics without having any teeth to his bombastic claims of making America "great again".  With that said, Trump isn't a lone ranger when it comes to giving the people what they want.  The difficulty in filling an arena with people interested in watching a science experiment versus the ease in packing those same stands with football, basketball or boxing fans immediately comes to mind.  It's not to devalue the greatness of sports or entertainment because, obviously, I have made a living from writing and discussing those things ad nauseam.  Nevertheless, when Americans turn on their televisions, log into their social media accounts and turn on their radios and media players, they often want a show, not a lecture.  Hence, in the fourth and final installment to "The American President: Donald Trump & The Societal Exposé", I will manifest the last reason why he is merely a byproduct of a society that routinely values style over substance...

PART 4: AMERICA THE OSTENTATIOUS

At a February 29 rally at Radford University in Virginia while trying to deliver a delayed punchline after several "disrupters" were escorted out, Donald Trump asks the crowd, "Hey, is it fun to be at a Trump rally?  Is this great?  Where else does this happen?"  Clearly, this is less about politics, but the love affair with Trump as the wildly controversial personality is deeper than what we see at these rallies, town halls and debates.  In an interview with NewsOne Now host Roland Martin, Armstrong Williams, Business Manager for Dr. Ben Carson, expressed the campaign's exasperation with the media pumping up Trump:

The media...their debates were set in motion and organized to cater to the entertainment value.  The debates were not set in motion to cater to intellect, to cater to real dialogue.  It was catered to benefit someone like a Donald Trump.  It was about ratings, it was about money, it was about entertainment.

Unfortunately, Carson's inability to compete with "The Trump Show" was the equivalent of putting any 1980s TV program in the "Friday night death slot" up against Dallas and expecting it to do even remotely well in the ratings.  Although he, like Senator Marco Rubio, was one of the hopefuls in the beginning of the race, Carson just fell flat in many of the debates and refused to take shots at his frenemies like Rubio and Cruz were willing to do;  essentially, he was living a perpetual "ain't nobody comin' to see you, Otis" moment.  Furthermore, Carson had some of Trump's same flaws, i.e., controversially critical of Muslims and weak on foreign policy, but Carson may have suffered from not taking Kevin Hart's advice and "saying it with his chest".  Trump may be loud and wrong at the same rate that condoms advertise that they protect people from STDs, but the Mike Tyson of the Republican Party is intent on making everyone else look like Glass Joe and nobody wants that guy to run the country.

If you don't want to believe Williams for fear that it might just be sour grapes on behalf of his boss, then consider the frank sentiments of Les Moonves, President and Chief Executive Officer for CBS Corporation.  During the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco on February 29, Moonves admitted to loving what the Trump "circus" is doing for his network:

Who would've thought this circus would come to town?  It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS...they're not even talking about issues.  They're throwing bombs at each other and I think the advertising reflects that.  Most of the ads are not about issues; they're sort of like the debates.  They're saying "he did this" or "he did that"; it doesn't say "what I stand for".  I've never seen anything like this and this is going to be a very good year for us.  Sorry, it's a terrible thing to say, but bring it on, Donald, go ahead, keep going...for us, economically, Donald's place in this election is a good thing.

While Moonves maintains that he's not taking any sides, he's not denying how Trump's approach yields a noticeable economic impact.  At the end of the business day, ratings and revenue are always in bed with each other and all of these networks are eating from it because everybody wants to talk about Trump.  He's a photo op, sound bite, screenshot and freeze frame waiting to happen as he meanders about with a Vince McMahon-like swagger.  He frequently spreads his arms and turns to the crowd for praise, shakes his head in disapproval when protestors interrupt and constantly purses his lips as if what he is about to say is the most profound thing that you will ever hear.  Unfortunately, it validates what Williams suggested as this presidential race on the GOP side of the game is less about concrete policy and more about a gladiator match.

In one of the most immature battles between two presidential candidates in the history of presidential elections, Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz have now involved their wives, Melania Trump and Heidi Cruz, and put them smack dab in the middle of a social media war.  Supposedly, this all started when anti-Trump Super PAC Make America Awesome promoted a pic of Trump's wife naked saying, "Meet Melania Trump, your next first lady.  Or, you could support Ted Cruz on Tuesday."  Trump's response: "Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!"  Cruz's counter: "Donald, real men don't attack women. Your wife is lovely, and Heidi is the love of my life."  Trump upped the ante as expected and made it a looks contest as he shared a meme from another Twitter user that juxtaposed an unflattering picture of Heidi Cruz against a favorable one of Melania Trump and said, "No need to 'spill the beans'...the images are worth a thousand words".  Once again, he had the opportunity to deescalate the situation and chose to ramp it up instead.  Now while I'm not defending any of Trump's shenanigans, I also call BS on Cruz, too.  He may not have personally circulated the picture of Melania Trump, but he sure hasn't stepped up to specifically disavow the actions of his allies--much like he and his fellow Republicans asked Trump to do with David Duke and Ku Klux Klan.  It's tasteless, unnecessary and detrimental to both of their campaigns because the intelligent female voter will have no parts of men using women to gain some kind of competitive advantage and political brownie points.  It's merely two grown men engaging in tactless adolescent posturing that sounds less like "here is my policy on [fill in the blank]" and more like "my bike can go way faster than yours".  Like Rubio, Cruz has allowed Trump to bait him into a pissing contest without a mom holding a gallon of Clorox in sight.

So how is the aforementioned scenario much different than your average reality TV show?  Simple: it isn't.  That then begs the question of the day: is Donald Trump an island unto himself when it comes to being a superficial show-off, or is he just an extension of what American society has become or has possibly always been?  Going back to Tummings' statement, think about most of the people on shows like any one of the installments in the Love & Hip Hop franchise.  Even as talented or underrated as rappers like Consequence or Joe Budden are, did people care more about their music than their potential for nonsense?  Was anybody willing to subject themselves to an entire album from either Yoselin Hernandez or Karlie Redd, or was it all about the obscenity-hurling drama that they could generate in the blink of an eye?  When Love & Hip Hop Atlanta effectively became The Stevie J. & Yoselin Hour, did anybody care much about Mimi Faust until her pornographic video with boyfriend Nikko Smith was "leaked"?  Even considering one of the only people who thrived from this franchise in a K. Michelle who can actually sing well, the book on her was that she was a pill during her Jive Records days and she validated those rumors as she has been one of the most volatile cast members--which unfortunately causes the average person to be more familiar with her cattiness than her catalog.  All-in-all, this hodgepodge of recording artists, managers, producers, socialites, models, video vixens and random AF nonentities all want you to believe that they are rich, talented and successful--mainly because they're "significant" enough to be on a television show.  However, the "reality" is more like an optical illusion built upon unapologetic attention seeking, infighting and tearing down someone else in order to propel and validate their own sense of importance.  More important, they literally bank on their lives being the guilty pleasures of millions of viewers because what's the point of drumming up the drama and the facade without an audience?

Because MTV, VH1 and these other networks cannot possibly give a reality show to every single person in America with an overblown sense of importance, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media outlets can.  Granted, every last person who posts something to social media wants some form of attention, but the distinctive question is to what are you drawing attention more often than not between family, friends, community, noble causes or just yourself?  The information superhighway is inundated with an exorbitant amount of bathroom selfies, breaking news updates about gym workouts and meal consumption, self-proclaimed profound quotes, incited beefs rife with expletives and jarring insults and airing dirty laundry down to the period and skid mark draws.  It's why so much of the social media culture has become more about "how to avoid being 'basic'" and "keep up with my life because it's sooooooo much more interesting than yours".  Instead of using social media as a networking tool to say "I want to connect with you so that we can genuinely stay in contact", the Internet reality show stars operate from "follow me so that I can have another spectator and royal subject".  Unfortunately, because the relentless attention seekers clog up our news feeds, it often prevents more important information from prevailing--much like what Moonves and others have said has not happened at most of the Republican debates.

Let's take it another step further to drive the overarching point home even more.  In one of my favorite musical genres, the ability of a hip-hop or rap artist to have widespread popularity and/or crossover into the mainstream is often predicated on one's image, style and content being "marketable".  During the Golden Era of Hip Hop in the late 1980s into the mid 1990s, different sub-genres of hip-hop/rap music were able to thrive because there was more of a balance.  However, the artists who embodied more of the traditional elements of hip-hop culture were ushered off of the airwaves for the "bling" era of expensive cars, flashy jewelry, stacks of money, gargantuan mansions and endless stories of trysts and sexual exploits.  Today, as universally acclaimed as Kendrick Lamar and his musically sophisticated ear is, Drake's flow and bravado combined with those Noah "40" Shebib and Boi-1da beats get everybody pumped in the club, on the radio, in the gym, in the whip or wherever the crank game needs to be the strongest.  In one of my favorite scenes from Drumline (2002), Atlanta A&T marching band director James Lee (Orlando Jones) battled with President Wagner (Afemo Omilami) about the "losing" direction: "I don't think we can measure the success of our program by the number of people shaking their butts in the stands...our first obligation is to educate, and then entertain."  President Wagner retorted, "Please, not the edutainment speech, James.  Save it for your students...there won't be a program if the alumni continue to lose interest.  We win, they write checks."  Bottom line, like Trump, what commercialized rap has become is merely a microcosm of the American social devolution: a society that often pays more attention (and money) to appeal over skill, sexy over sound and flashy over fundamental.

Since announcing his candidacy, Donald Trump has been consistently one of the most discussed figureheads in American politics because he has effectively done four things: 1) he has exposed the under-discussed rift in American society along racial, social, religious, gender, political and economic lines; 2) he has been able to incite a section of America that the hippest people knew existed, but were successfully hidden in the shadows for years; 3) he has manifested how being informed is not prioritized in the same way as talking or shouting over someone with an opposing view; and 4) he has made this presidential election more about entertaining than enhancing the quality of life for all Americans with an actual set of plans.  Some might say that Trump is nothing but a glorified demagogue at best, but I believe that he's operating with a sinister and calculated brilliance that no one has been able to overtake.  With 943 delegates still available and 501 needed for him to clinch the nomination, Trump has 736, Cruz has 436 and Governor John Kasich is bringing up the rear with 143.  People literally line up around corners to see him at rallies and town halls simply to be in the presence of America's most polarizing figure.  Somehow in the midst of throwing political correctness out with the Friday trash, he's doing something right and I'll tell you exactly what it is: he has shown America itself in the mirror.  He has revealed all of the wrinkles, blemishes, crow's feet, bags, blackheads and dead skin that this nation has refused to recognize in every community beyond just the angry section of White America who wholeheartedly believe that Blacks, Mexicans and Muslims are the greatest threats to their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.  If he becomes the 45th President of the United States, then no one should be shocked or even appalled.  When you consider the troubling history that continues to haunt and permeate our society, then no one is more apt for the position of commander-in-chief of this country than Donald Trump.  He is the prototypical American president--probably not for better, but most certainly for a whole lot worse...