Trump's Next Reality Hit

Last week, I took a look at what happens when one well-off family allowed a camera crew to insinuate itself into their daily lives, back in May-December 1971 (for PBS's 1973 landmark An American Family). Today, it seems as though the Presidency itself, or at least the campaign for it, has been reduced to all the pre-programmed unreality of a modern reality show.  Even before Trump, two of the leading list (Sarah Palin on her recent TLC show and Mike Huckabee's weekend interview show on FoxNews) had a reality TV background.

Indeed, each of the leading challengers to President Obama might just as well have been "cast" for contestant slots on a reality show, like Donald Trump's hit two-hour Celebrity Apprentice. There's a JR Ewing or Gordon Gekko-style delicious villain (Newt Gingrich).  There's a handsome, bland, Dudley Do-Right hero (Mitt Romney).  Then there's the Type-A jock who knows how to read (Tim Pawlenty).  And of course, what would a reality show be without a couple of self-involved, Snooki or Omarosa-type divas, whose prickly and demanding personalities might make some viewers think of a word that rhymes with "itches" (Palin and Bachmann).  We even have an aw-shucks, slightly nerdy, religious guy-next-door to round things out (Huckabee).

All things considered, the question isn't why would a media opportunist like Trump exploit this to create his own even higher-rated "spinoff" of his hit NBC reality series.  The question is why wouldn't he?

Indeed, Celebrity Apprentice is one of if not often the highest-rated shows on NBC's troubled prime-time schedule, which has been mired in fourth place for several years (all the more humiliating after a 20-year period of total dominance from the late 1980s through roughly Bush's first term.)  And this isn't the first tabloidey, high-profile controversy generator that the Peacock network has found itself involved in of late. (Remember Conan vs. Jay?) And few shows are more of an iconic shorthand for the era of outsourcing, downsizing, job loss, and economic meltdown than a program known most for telling teary-eyed victims "Ya FIRED!", as others get off on the drama, and still others count their blessings that it's on TV, not their real life.

Even I am not cynical enough to think that NBC-Universal or Comcast was directly "behind" Trump's birther escapades. But the secret to Donald Trump's considerable staying power and success is that he has always been an inveterate showman.  Like Charlie Sheen, Trump provided the network and its flagship show with a tsunami wave of publicity that money alone couldn't buy (especially at today's ad rates!)   Interestingly, much of the most negative publicity has come from within the network's own wheelhouse, as liberal cable channel MSNBC's relentless coverage of Trump and birtherism provided countless hours of subject matter for Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Rachel Maddow, and especially Lawrence O'Donnell.  For what it's worth, I think that O'Donnell and Matthews really are and were as disgusted as they seemed to be on TV at birtherism in general and Trump's high profile semi-legitimization of it.  But they also "spelled the show's name right", as they say in Hollywood.

"Mark my words," O'Donnell recently dared, "when NBC announces its prime-time schedule on May 16th," he thinks Celebrity Apprentice will still be on it, that Trump will return to his small-screen box and give up any illusions of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and all this silliness might well be over.  He's half right.  Trump might very well go back to his hit show and leave the politics to the professional politicians.  But with the racialist overtones of birtherism, the decision to renew the next season of Apprentice could have implications far beyond the usual pass/fail of an otherwise successful series.  On the one hand, Apprentice's ratings to date clearly merit a strong campaign for the show's renewal.  On the other, both NBC (Keith Olbermann) and arch-rival Fox (Glenn Beck) have recently proven themselves quite willing to sack their leading lights once they become too embarrassing, too much of a liability.

Now that Trump himself is disingenuously trying to back away from the birther issue while simultaneously taking credit for "forcing" Obama to submit to his will, the question still remains of why this very intelligent, able businessman would choose to pull off such a high-wire stunt as this?   Did he think that it would just be a vehicle he could ride for more publicity, like his show?  And more importantly, bottom-line businessman that he is, did Trump just coldly decide that with Obama's 95% share of African-Americans (and overwhelming support among Latinos), that "those people won't vote for me anyway", so he might as well tap into the most incendiary rage against that foreign-sounding "worst President in history"?  Racism by cost/benefit analysis, as it were?

If The Donald does decide to run (or if NBC makes the first move in canceling Trump, which would ironically "free him up" to run next year), the other big question is what they will do with their Sunday-night timeslot after football plays itself out.  Will they try to find another media-friendly ruling classer (Gates?  Soros?  Buffett?  Some spare Rockefeller or Kennedy lying around?) to take over Trump's hiring and "You're FIRED"-ing duties?

Or, might they bait-and-switch, and make a reality show about Trump's already reality-show-like campaign for the Presidency?  There's actually some precedent for that.  In 1988, Robert Altman made a brilliant mockumentary called Tanner '88 (starring Michael Murphy), about a hopeful Democratic politician trying to capture the nomination to go against the first George Bush.  (Twenty years earlier, droopy-dog comedian Pat Paulsen "ran for President" on the stage of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.)

And, as offensive as I find a lot of Trump's comments to be, I can't help but thinking that THAT would be a reality show I would watch.

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