FAR FROM HEAVEN Trumpworld, reimagined as one of Hieronymus Boschs Hell paintings.
Artwork by Glenn Palmer-Smith.
On May 19, 1962, at an event at Madison Square Garden celebrating John F. Kennedy, about to turn 45, Marilyn Monroe stepped onstage to sing. Wearing a dress that matched exactly the color of her skin, a sort of glowing, gleaming pale, and every bit as tighta dress, in other words, that took off her clothesshe made Happy Birthday sound like the lewdest of suggestions, an invitation to sin no mortal man could resist. In that moment, it became clear that, even if the cake hadnt yet been served, our president had already let our movie star blow out his candle. Pop culture had officially unofficially seduced politics.
Which is why Donald J. Trump is not Americas first pop-culture president. There was Kennedy, of course, but also Reagan, Clinton, Obama. In fact, as far as the past 50-plus years go, Trumps almost as much the rule as the exception, the same ol, same ol, more or less. Its the pop culture thats changed.
When a movie version of his life story was proposed, Kennedy had one actor in mind to play him: Cary Grant. Grant, the man-about-town of his time and ours, the savoir fairest of them all, was the creation of Archibald Leach, from the slums of Bristol, England. Its never been matched. Acknowledging the potency of the fantasy hed conjured, his blessing but also his curse, he said, Even I want to be Cary Grant. Meaning he wasnt. Meaning nobody could be.
Yet thats precisely who Barack Obama is. Its the style: an ultra-stylish style that doesnt involve primping or fuss. Its the manner, too: civilized, self-aware, masculine, though with a faint hint of ambiguity. Critic Pauline Kael called Grant the most publicly seduced male the world has known. Like Grant, Obama is a love object. Not passivereticent, withheld. He doesnt chase the girl, but he gets her all right. And he gets her by getting her to go after him. Why, we (yes, were the girls in this scenario) practically threw our votes his way.
Trumps erotic stratagem was different but no less effective, and embodied in his campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. The first time I heard it my reaction was somewhere between hostility and dismissal. What is this again shit?, I wondered. Were great now, the richest, freest, most powerful country on the planet. Its just more of his dark, divisive noise, I concluded. And it is. But its something else too, as I realized during a conversation with Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, a pro and very smart and no fan of Trumps. He referred to the slogan as brilliant. I thought about it some more, and my thoughts about it began to change. Brilliant I wont grant. But it does have a low cunning that might be better than brilliant.
THE 2016 ELECTION WASNT HILLARY VS. TRUMP. IT WAS MOVIE STAR VS. REALITY.
Heres what Make America Great Again is the equivalent of: a guy, a little long in the tooth, a little broad in the beam (Trump, lets say), spots a sensational-looking girl, a girl whos so far out of his league its a joke (America, lets say). Instead of complimenting her on her loveliness, he informs her that she needs a nose job, a tit job, braces, and to lose 10 pounds. The girl is about to tell him off, really let him have it, except something stops her. Its a thought, a devastating one, that maybe hes right, that maybe its everybody else whos shining her on and hes actually leveling with her. And just like that, in a single moment, shes his. At least until she wises up, and that could take a while.
So were clear, I did not vote for Trump. I regard him as a calamity and a disgrace, the worst thing to happen to this country in my lifetime. And yet, and yet, I respond to him. When he, a draft deferrer, venereal disease his quote personal Vietnam unquote, said of John McCain, who had exhibited such ferocious courage in that Hanoi prison it nearly defies comprehension, Hes a war hero because he was captured. I like people who werent captured, I laughed. The laugh was involuntary, just popping out of my mouth. What it was also was shameful, appalling, horrific. It meant that if I hadnt entertained such a thought myself I was capable of it. Another way of saying, I was shocked because I wasnt. The laugh, therefore, was not so much a signifier of amusement as recognition.
Though also of amusement because, for someone whos essentially humorless, Trump is fun-nee. The sheer recklessness of the things he says takes the breath away. How dare he? But again and again he dares. Hell attack, assault, degrade anyone. At his rallies there was the sense that even he didnt know who he was going to go after next. So, built right in was the frisson of suspense, which is one of the reasons they were the hottest ticket in whatever town they happened to be playing. Translation: he turned everybody on. Hillary, by contrast, at her rallies was calm, earnest, respectful. Translation: she bored asses off in all directions. Every move she made felt stage-managed, canned. Not so with Trump. He didnt need a teleprompter or even a prepared speech, would just saunter up to that podium and start to blow, to shpritz, to wing it, basically, and successfully, because he understood how to capture a crowds attention. Hijack it, really.
Its a talent hes been cultivating for years. Dont forget, Trumps spent much of his career clinging to the bottom rungs of the entertainment industry: Miss Universe pageants, WrestleMania IV, V, XX, and 23, and, of course, The Apprentice. No prestige pictures with blue-chip directors for him, no HBO limited series, he wasnt knocking them dead on Broadway or standing-room-only at Carnegie Hall. Guys played one toilet after another. And in so doing hes honed not just his performers instinctat events like WrestleMania, where he once body-slammed Vince McMahon before shaving the W.W.E. chairmans head, his contact with the audience is direct, nothing between him and it, skin on skin, bareback, babybut his common touch, as well. (Have you ever watched Miss Universe or WrestleMania? The Apprentice? Me neither. A lot of people have, though, and, dollars to doughnuts, theyre the ones walking around in those little red caps.) A related aside: the irony that a billionaire who started out life a millionaire has become the Working-Class Hero is forever being remarked upon by the media. Like, how much of a nitwit is Average Joe for imagining that Trump is his man. But its Average Joe whos got it right. Trump is Average Joe except filthy stinking rich, i.e., a winner. Hes managed to acquire money without acquiring sophistication. He still talks like a kid from Queens, has a taste for flashy cars and women, and lives in houses that make one long for the understated elegance of Graceland. By the way, I bet he watches Miss Universe, WrestleMania, and The Apprentice, and not just because hes keeping an eye on his investments.
And gutter showbiz has, Id contend, shaped his worldview. As president, hes turned a Supreme Court nomination into a Bachelor finale, less selected his Cabinet than cast it (If Im doing a movie, Id pick you . . . General Mattis), and cannot shut up about ratings (he opened the National Prayer Breakfast by remarking on the tanking popularity of The Celebrity Apprentice, asking the room full of lawmakers and dignitaries to just pray for Arnold [Schwarzenegger, the new host]).
Before I get to what Trump is, what Trump isnt: a businessman. Rather, hes a showbusinessman, part con manhow many bankruptcies has he declared? little guys has he stiffed?part ham actor impersonating a businessman. Even more so he isnt a president. The first few months of his administration have been somewhere between Dr. Strangelove played straight and Dr. Strangelove played camp. What he is is a reality star. In fact, you could argue that he invented the concept. I was born in 1978, not in New York, and yet hes been on my radar since I can remember, his life, his loves, his scandals constantly in the tabloids, and what are Page Six and the National Enquirer but the Ur-E! and Bravo?
The 2016 election wasnt Hillary vs. Trump. It was Movie Star vs. Reality. Not only because Obama was Hillarys most dynamic surrogate but because practically every star in Hollywoodmovie, though TV and music, toocampaigned on her behalf. And yet Reality won, proof that movies dont hold sway over the public imagination as they once did, in itself proof that the public wants a different type of relationship with its stars. Stars used to be exactly that: radiant entities to be marveled at from a distance. Thanks to social media, however, the 24-hour news cycle, distance is no longer possible. Perfectly O.K., since an up-close view is what we truly crave, each pore, each wrinkle, each pimple in high definition. And whos interested in seeing a posed photo these days? Better the ones without makeup or undies or even knowledge. (When a stars lover or ex-lover sneaks an intimate shot and then leaks itooo-wee, pay dirt.) And beat it with your puff pieces already. We dont care about Johnny Depps charity work. What were hot to know is, did he really smack Amber around and openhanded or closed and was he loaded at the time? We continue to be moved by beauty. Were also moved, though, and more powerfully, by ugliness: physical, social, moral. Our stars are still stars, only the term now is ironic since we dont look up at them but down.
Trump never feigned virtue during his campaign. And thats what made him, for many voters, the authentic candidate. He was a brute and a son of a bitch, except he, in the immortal words of Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel, owned it. And owning it, in the reality-TV world, which, lets face it, is the world we are currently living in, absolves all sins. Its why everything that was sure to bring him downcalling Mexican immigrants rapists, ridiculing the disabled, speculating on the menstrual cycle of a news anchor, etc.didnt, if anything increased his strength. He became a mash-up of Simon Cowell, Spencer Pratt, and Teresa Giudice, a super-villain, as impossible to kill as he was to stop watching.
Interesting to note: traditional stars are bowed but not broken when it comes to Trump, indeed reality stars in general. They responded to his inauguration party the same way Jay Z and Beyonc responded to Kim and Kanyes nuptialsby staying away in droves. Well, rejecting the pretensions of the peacocking parvenu is one of the sweetest pleasures left to the fallen aristocrat. Also interesting: its Obama, the younger man, and seemingly the more modern in every conceivable respect, whos the throwback.
Theres something Trump is every bit as fundamentally as a reality star, and thats a stand-up comic. Lenny Bruce, specifically. (Hey, if Bill Clinton was, according to Toni Morrison, our first black president, why cant Trump be our first Jewish?) Hes an eighth-rate version of Bruce, to be sure, and an unwitting one. Has none of Bruces hipness or perspicacity. He does, however, have Bruces shamelessness, and Bruces free-associative, buggy style, and he goes as far as Bruce. His mocking of McCain was, in fact, like an updating of Bruces Jackie Kennedy Hauling Ass to Save Her Ass routine, and equally as blasphemous.
Timing is, of course, everything. It was in the 50s that Bruce, the lounge-lizard dark prince, started to slay at the clubs in the more happening cities. Now these days, the present day, is the polar opposite of that tight-assed decadegay couples can marry! movie about queer black youth takes big prize at Oscars! transgender woman on the cover of this very magazine!except think again. The 2010s, with its safe spaces and trigger warnings, its dont-say-thises and dont-think-thats, where feeling like a victim is the hot pastime and male burden is the new male privilege, are, in certain ways, even tighter-assed, a neo-Victorian era masquerading as the waning days of the Roman Empire. Political correctness is just another form of fascism. (That fascism now comes from the left doesnt make it any less stifling.) People are almost comically alienated from their instincts. The super-ego reigns supreme.
TRUMP SPENT HIS CAREER CLINGING TO THE BOTTOM RUNGS OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY.
Enter Trump, pure id. No cruelty-free-tofu-nibbling, prissy-European-taste-having, sorry-excuse-for-a-man man he. Unh-uh. Hes a big butch American hot dog. Hes not tortured by the idea of using torture. And a nuclear-arms race? Bring it on, sayeth he, those loser countries will be eating our atomic dust: We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all. Hes a swinging dick and an alpha male, a maker of deals and a builder of buildingswhy, the Manhattan skyline is simply crammed with his erections! And since were on the topic of erections, he isnt one of those pencil-necked sissies who need a woman to sign a permission slip before hell try to hold her hand. Hell no, he grabs pussy first, asks questions later. Is a masher of the type thats supposed to have died out generations ago.
This isnt to say hes devoid of romantic feeling. Who could forget that series of impassioned tweets from 2012 in which he urged Robert Pattinson not to take back the cheating Kristen Stewart. (Had Pattinson been his fella, he wouldnt have treated him so shabbily seems to be the message hes trying to convey.) There is, too, the wistful, teenage-girl note that creeps into his voice whenever he talks about Vladimir Putin. Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscowif so, will he become my new best friend? Does Trump secretly long for the brutal quasi-dictator to take him in his arms, crush him to his chest, make him dream again?
And then theres Trumps temperament, which is, and not to be a traitor to my sex, on the womanish side. He clutches to his dignity as tenaciously as a dowager to her pearls. Never does he let an insult roll off his back. Make a dig about his hand size, for example, and he will (in fairness, rightly) perceive it as a dig about his manhood. Could the Donalds Donald be merely a Don? Not to hear him tell it: My fingers are long and beautiful, as . . . are various other parts of my body. Touchy, touchy.
It was in 1961 that Bruce said the 10-letter word onstage, got arrested for obscenity. His life was ruined, but it was the making of him. Hed always been more than a guy in a rented tux telling jokes to drunks. Suddenly, though, he was a rebel with a causeAmendment Numero Uno. He refused to be silenced, endured bust after bust, so that we might speak. And, five years later, his martyrdom would be complete when he died in a bathroom, fat, naked, a needle sticking out of his arm. The Christ who said cocksucker.
If Trump were really smart, hed have done the same. Not the dying-next-to-a-toilet thing, the losing-in-order-to-win-big thing. Trump feeds off the ardor of his fans, and his best chance of retaining that ardor lay in defeat in a squeaker. Then hed be able to claim that he was the man who could be, nay, should be, king, and spend the remainder of his days shaking a Byronic fist at the rigged system, the ideal situation for someone who is, by nature, an outsider and a rager. Instead, he pulled off the upset. Now hes on the inside of the inside, in a job that requires, above all else, calm reflection and sober judgment. No longer can he say whatever kooky little whacked-out thought that pops into his skull. Not without bringing down a world of shit, anyway (see: Obama wiretapping tweets). And, oh yeah, hes going to actually have to deliver on his campaign promises or risk hurtful comparisons to Crooked Hillary. And from there its only a short jump to the most painful scenario of all: the crowds love turning into hate, the cheers turning into jeers.
Hes president of the United States. Its his nightmare. Our worst nightmare.
Losing to wind next to his helicopter in Scotland.
Losing to wind at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
Losing to wind as he heads to Indiana.
Losing to wind while hes in Scotland to discuss bankrolling an anti-wind-farm campaign in order to fight an off-shore development near his luxury golf resort.
Losing to wind in the presence of Tom Brady.
Losing to wind while waving.
Putting up a good fight but ultimately losing to wind in Scotland.
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Losing to wind next to his helicopter in Scotland.
By Michael McGurk/Alamy.
Losing to wind at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
By Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
Losing to wind as he heads to Indiana.
By Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.
Losing to wind while hes in Scotland to discuss bankrolling an anti-wind-farm campaign in order to fight an off-shore development near his luxury golf resort.
By Danny Lawson/PA/A.P.
Losing to wind while he talks to Patriots owner Robert Kraft before a game.
From Splash News.
Losing to wind at the house on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland, where his mother was born before she immigrated to the United States in 1929.
From PA/Alamy.
Losing to wind while boarding the Marine One helicopter at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
By Jonathan Ernst/Reuters.
Losing to wind while leaving One World Trade in New York.
By Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images.
Losing to wind in the presence of Tom Brady.
From Boston Herald/Splash News.
Losing to wind while waving.
By Rob Carr/Getty Images.
Putting up a good fight but ultimately losing to wind in Scotland.
By Michael McGurk/Rex/Shutterstock.
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Donald Trump's Biggest Mistake Might Have Been Getting Elected - Vanity Fair
