Posted on 10/13/2015 6:16:19 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Donald J. Trump, like any good reality TV protagonist, does not inspire neutral opinions. He is a savior or a disaster; a bigot or a patriot; a truth-teller or a buffoon; a commanding front-runner or a bubble on the verge of bursting. On one point, at least, there is something like political pundit consensus: that Mr. Trump’s abrasive, celebrity-driven, Don Ricklesian candidacy is unprecedented.
And it is unprecedented, if your television-watching is limited to C-Span and CNN. But if you’ve watched reality TV over the past decade or two, you’ve seen it plenty. You’ve seen it in Richard Hatch and Russell Hantz, the love-to-hate-them manipulators of “Survivor”; in the backbiting contestants in the boardroom of Mr. Trump’s “The Apprentice”; in Courtney Robertson, the feisty winner of “The Bachelor” who captured her experience in the book “I Didn’t Come Here to Make Friends,” which would make a great title for Mr. Trump’s eventual campaign memoir.
It would be reductive — and dismissive of the conservative and populist forces behind Mr. Trump’s rise — to say that his campaign simply means that politics has become reality TV. But Mr. Trump’s style does suggest that he learned at least as much about campaigning in the boardroom of “The Apprentice” as in any actual boardroom.
Traditional presidential politics is like television in Ed Sullivan’s day, when the big three networks developed the idea of “least objectionable programming” — broad, inoffensive, something-for-everyone shows intended to keep anyone from changing the channel....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Wow, a Don Rickles reference? That’s surely going over the head of most of the times millennial readers
My favorite comedian. Loved Kelley’s Heroes and the roasts.
Oh yeah, those roasts he’s on always leave me in tears
Don Rickles can be found on Youtube—all the old roasts, Johnny Carson shows, etc.
He still makes me laugh until my sides hurt.
89 years old, WW2 Navy Vet and all around lovable guy.
What the New York Times forgets is that 80% of people do not trust media any longer!
I once met a school teacher who looked and sounded like and had the same wacky sense of humor as Don Rickles, the two could have been separated at birth. It was not subtle, within one minute of meeting him you were saying this is Don Rickles. My older brother helped the guy’s brother clear a lot for a house he was building, the brother was a preacher and was not at all like the school teacher. I felt much more comfortable around the Don Rickles clone.
“What the New York Times forgets is that 80% of people do not trust media any longer!”
Only because people in the media are phony.
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