In Trump vs. Hillary, one candidate is held to the standards of a reality TV star (outrageousness wins), another to those of an actual public official.
Gather around the TV, kids. Walk-on-the-moon-type history is being made and it’s coming to you in HD clarity and flat-screen brilliance. The 2016 presidential race is America’s first interactive reality show, with a carefully coiffed candidate who has more in common with Real World-ers, Real Housewives and contestants on America’s Got Talent than serious civic leaders. In fact, Donald Trump reminds me of the AGT contestant a few seasons ago who called himself “Horse,” whose sole talent was having people kick him in the scrotum. The live audience screamed in delight at every strike, so naturally, the judges voted him through.
Like Horse, Trump has delighted the voting audience by enduring a series of kicks to the nether region from the political left, right and center that would send any other candidate staggering to the nearest podium to suspend his or her campaign in shame. Shame is a byproduct of conscience that keeps us on a moral path. Without shame, we permit ourselves to perpetuate any offense without recourse. That’s why the American public always has demanded contrition from any politician who has sinned against us by lying, misleading or performing an act of corruption. Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Mark Sanford, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner and more have been shamed in the pillory of public opinion. All publicly renounced their lamentable actions and, with humility false or true, asked America for forgiveness.
But there is no shame in reality TV. The stars perpetrate the most heinous acts on each other without an iota of self-awareness or the moral foundation that fosters shame. In their “confessionals” to the camera, they indignantly justify their own bad behavior with twisted logic and blame the others for their own betrayals. They confuse having character traits — like cruelty, self-deception and rudeness — with having character. They think malevolence and malice is the same as grit and grace…
Read the rest at The Hollywood Reporter
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