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The Apprentice: Your Civic Duty
Well, I’m still mighty skeptical, but you’ve convinced me that I can no longer dismiss as totally lunatic the rumor that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won the New Hampshire primaries. So this brings me to an interesting problem, as a concerned and responsible citizen.
Sounds like you think there’s a non-zero chance that Trump could be the Republican presidential nominee. Okay, I believe it. Time to take that idea seriously.
But it’s very difficult to figure out what he would really do in office based on his past experience in office, since he hasn’t got one. I literally can’t make sense of his stream-of-consciousness speeches. He’s gonna be tough, he’s gonna be smart, he’s gonna build a wall, he’s gonna take care of everyone and it’s all going to go quickly, but I truly don’t understand what he’s proposing to do. I mean that. Not being snide, and certainly not dismissing the concerns of people who support him, because I agree that if so many Americans think he speaks for them, it’s urgently important to understand why and what they want. I truly, literally, mean that I don’t get what he’s saying, because it makes no sense to me as a plan or as something a president has the constitutional power to do.
There seems to be a non-zero chance, now, that I’ll have to choose between him and Bernie Sanders. Sanders makes quite good sense and is very specific about what he plans to do — and he plans to do things that I believe would be a very, very bad idea. So, and I’m being quite serious, here, I think it’s time for me to try to figure out how Donald Trump views the world. And I don’t think reading The Art of the Deal is the key, though I’ve ordered it. I think, very seriously, that watching all 14 seasons of The Apprentice would give me a much better insight.
I’m halfway through the first season. My first impression is that I don’t know why this show was a hit. If Trump weren’t the GOP front runner, I’d never have finished the first episode. I’m not saying this out of any kind of snobbery: I love trashy TV, and I was absolutely gripped to the first season of Survivor, to the point of racing home every week on Wednesday night in order not to miss it. So I was thinking, “Well, at least this will be fun.”
But it’s not, so far. It’s badly edited and paced, very boring, and there are no likeable characters in it yet. I want them all to lose. They’re all screechy, boastful, obnoxious, obsequious to Trump and mean to each other, and they’re all unsympathetic, which to my mind is a huge dramatic mistake. If there’s not a single character you can like, you don’t care who wins, so there’s no dramatic tension, so far. Nor has Trump so far made himself seem like a fair, wise, or judicious judge of talent, or someone who obviously surrounds himself with reliable advisors, which of course is what I’m looking for, given the circumstances.
But I don’t want to prejudice you unfairly, so beyond saying that I’m only on Episode Five, and maybe it gets better (no spoilers, please), I’ll just note that the editing is 97th-rate. The pacing is off, it gets very boring, very fast, and it’s not the guilty pleasure I’d hoped.
Still, I mean it: I think it’s now a civic duty to watch it. Because we might really have to decide whether he’d at least do a better job than the socialist.
Will you join me? I’d like to discuss it with other people who are wondering what on earth this man would do in a job where, as Eliot Cohen put it, he’ll “face the most difficult international environment in more than half a century, but without the economic and military edge that we can see—only in retrospect, admittedly—Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy could take for granted.” He’d be making decision after decisions that affects every corner of the planet based only on instinct and a small group of trusted advisors, so the way he approaches such decisions is quite important. Here’s the first episode. What do you take from it?
I realize this isn’t like reading Churchill’s memoirs, but it’s really all we’ve got, isn’t it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjaYqk59y0g
Published in Entertainment, General, Politics
I have already watched a number of such episodes from early seasons. (I can’t tell you which because my method for selecting shows is to watch whatever my wife is watching.) My assessment is not complimentary to Trump. His approach to selecting the best of the “candidates” is to pit them in competition with each other on unrelated — often ridiculous — artificial “projects.” If he were truly testing for resilience, tenaciousness, creativity, etc., I suppose I could see it, but his reasons for “firing” someone change from show to show. I don’t know if he knows why he prefers one person over another. Personal chemistry is not an invalid criterion, but it is not very scaleable.
My only contribution here is another plea that we avoid pejoratives like Trumpkins (or Rubots).
My suggestions are Trumpeters, Cruzers, and Marconauts.
OK, I take it back. I have one more contribution, only 7 seconds long, Theoden at Helm’s Deep:
If you have 2 minutes, here’s the whole thing:
This may be his most positive attribute. I know I am tired of the grey eminences of the press trying to control the national agenda.
Yes, Omarosa is memorable, and no, you are not supposed to like her.
The producer, Mark Burnett, also produced Survivor (so there you go) and The Bible miniseries. He’s married to Roma Downey.
I watched the first few episodes and thought “maybe they haven’t found their narrative theme.”
I watched the next few and thought “maybe they have,” and stopped watching.
I tried, I really did. But no, I can’t. It didn’t take long to realize that this is more of the same management and leadership cliches I heard in all the business management classes I took in college – or read in the latest (but not greatest) self-help books pushed by one manager or another in my job. There is nothing there. Blowhards, competitive jerks, snark – and that’s BEFORE Trump comes in to give his arrogant “lessons”. I think that if Ted Cruz wanted to fix his “problem” with New York values – he should just pull a clip or two from this. New Yorkers might not understand – but the rest of us would.
Sorry – you’re on your own – I can’t watch any more of that – not even for research.
I’m at that place and I realize I sort of committed myself to this and I’m wondering how I can wriggle out of this without feeling like a bad citizen. It’s so boring. I really thought, “Oh, this will be fun.” Or at least, “Oh, this will make me really angry at the thought of a Trump presidency,” or, “I’ll get excited about a Trump presidency despite myself.” I didn’t expect it to be more boring than an obscure Ingmar Bergman movie.
Hey, Ingrid Bergman was a fine actress who did fine movies.
Oh, wait….
On the other hand, there’s no need for you to act like a government research program. If you’ve learned what you came to learn, or discerned that there’s no learning to be had on this path, you can with honor stop the research before you’ve run out of OPM, or even resource.
Eric Hines
What’s that got to do with boorish behavior?
I think we Ricochetti will release you from your promise. Your time is more valuable that this and you would be draining IQ points at the rate of 3-5 per episode.
(Okay, I actually like The Seventh Seal, but I thought of this when you mentioned Bergman…)
See? That’s really funny and clever. I was hoping the show would be more like that.
So Claire, have you watched an entire season? What did you think?
Claire, thank you for this idea. I have just finished watching Season One. I was baffled by the Trump victories and had no intention of voting for Trump if anyone else survives until the California primary. But I liked the show a lot more than I expected, and surprisingly Trump seems a lot more human to me now. I even sorta understand why people are voting for him. So even if you give up (which you should — if you didn’t like the first half, there’s no chance you’ll like the rest), your idea paid off for at least one of us.