webodec3ARCHIVEPreview
Open in TheBrain

Reality TV

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see CEC

SEE SEAN DUFFY SEC TRANS

joe ROGAN FEAR FACTOR

TRUMP ADMIN propsed to solve some problem // hunger games green card?

fame --> // influencer?

uber1

https://webbrain.com/brainpage/brain/6950F840-FB80-FCB0-D505-8AB1FA685F08#-4118

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sting: lost my faith in pols, they all look like game show hosts to me:

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POLY SCI USC

BTB BATMAN VID AI MIGRANT PUSSY

ORIGIN STORY PALLISADES FIRE PARENTS HSE TOO; CLAIM LIVE IN TRAILER BUT ACTUALLY BEL AIR HOTEL THUS BAD RAP VIDEO

// NJ THE SITUATION

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mma

The right-wing media machine lines up behind reality TV’s Spencer Pratt for Los Angeles mayor

Written by Jack Winstanley & Gideon Taaffe

Published 05/12/26

Following last week’s mayoral debate in Los Angeles, right-wing media have praised candidate Spencer Pratt, a Republican, as a “star” and a “political colonoscopy for California politics.” Some even compared Pratt to Trump as a reality TV personality-turned-politician. Pratt is running against Democrat incumbent Karen Bass and LA city council member Nithya Raman.

Former reality TV personality Spencer Pratt is campaigning to become Los Angeles’ next mayor

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AN 5 25

Salon Senior writer Amanda Marcotte says President Donald Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement adores a “bimbo."

“In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty,” Marcotte writes. “Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies. Intelligence gets in the way of the true duties of MAGA womanhood: keeping up your highly artificial appearance and, crucially, defending the man you serve with your whole heart and soul.”

As example, Marcotte said look to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem proudly proclaiming ignorance of the meaning behind habeas corpus. “‘Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to,’ Noem said through her unnervingly Botox-inflated lips.”

READ MORE:Republicans have 'no idea' what's coming: Dems delighted as they await budget backlash

Was Noem, who got a college degree through online courses, has taken the “role of the proud MAGA bimbo, in the grand tradition of figures like Sarah Palin," Marcotte writes. "The MAGA bimbo isn't just ignorant. She's contemptuous of people who actually know what they're talking about, especially if those facts-laden human beings are fellow women.”

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Where the 20th-century version of the "bimbo" is a dim and mostly good-hearted woman, the MAGA movement makes the bimbo a nasty figure, “as cruel as she is dumb.” The modern right-wing man wants an attack dog, “someone who will charge in to fight your battles, unconstrained by intellectual concerns.”

“Ignorance is bliss,” said Marcotte, “at least for bigots.”

The origins of this bimbo devolution lies in reality TV like ‘The Apprentice,’ and ‘Real Housewives’, “where petty and cruel behavior is rewarded over human decency.”

READ MORE: 'Evil and depraved': Kristi Noem buried over 'embarrassing' social media post

Noem shapes herself around the stereotype of the wine-throwing real housewife, pairing “expensive clothes and plastic surgery with displays of breathtaking sadism, all performed as if she is literally too stupid to know better.”

“That's how we get pictures of Noem in full makeup with a $60,000 Rolex parading around in front of half-naked men in a torture prison, like she's a real-life "Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S." Or wearing various uniforms with full makeup and a blowout to conduct raids, earning the nickname 'ICE Barbie.'"

“The bimbo can only act on impulse, never information. In this MAGA narrative, it's liberals who are the meanies for asking more of a woman viewed as mentally incapable of handling it,” Marcotte wrote.

Read the full Salon analysis here.

REF

Does Kristi Noem know what habeas corpus is? One thing we know for certain: She would very much like Americans to believe she does not. On Tuesday, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a Senate hearing to insist the legal term means the opposite of its actual definition. "Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to," Noem said through her unnervingly Botox-inflated lips. She was interrupted by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who explained to a smug-looking Noem that, no, habeas corpus "requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people" and is the reason it's illegal for Donald Trump to round up immigrants and imprison them in foreign gulags without offering a legal reason why.

In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty.

Was Noem legitimately confused? Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic thinks so, writing that Noem's "ignorance appears to be utterly genuine." After all, "habeas corpus" is a Latin term used by lawyers but not much by laypeople, especially those, like Noem, who got a college degree through online courses at age 40. But I'm not so sure that Noem, who has been neck-deep in this debate about basic human rights for months, is as dumb as she seemed in that moment. Those who keep watching will notice that Noem doesn't act embarrassed when she's corrected, like normal people do when they get something so terribly wrong. Instead, she insists that "the President of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not." In this lie, Noem admitted that Trump is trying to suspend habeas corpus, not uphold it. It suggests that she knows full well what the actual legal battle is about.

There was much mockery of Noem for being so dumb in mainstream and left-leaning media, but notably, neither Noem nor her allies have shown any shame or defensiveness about her alleged mistake. Whether Noem comes by her confusion honestly or she was just play-acting, she's there to play the role of the proud MAGA bimbo, in the grand tradition of figures like Sarah Palin. The MAGA bimbo isn't just ignorant. She's contemptuous of people who actually know what they're talking about, especially if those facts-laden human beings are fellow women.

*Want more Amanda Marcotte on politics? Subscribe to her newsletter Standing Room Only.

In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty. Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies. Intelligence gets in the way of the true duties of MAGA womanhood: keeping up your highly artificial appearance and, crucially, defending the man you serve with your whole heart and soul. Especially if said man, in this case Donald Trump, is himself dumber than a box of rocks. It's so much easier to be a yes-woman for such a man if you turn your own brain off completely.

For decades in pop culture, the figure of the bimbo has boosted the egos of men who need women to be dumb to feel smart. Being dim means she's not threatening, which makes the bimbo sexy. The allegiance of the bimbo is assured. She has to be loyal to her man because she cannot survive without him. But the bimbo was always more fantasy than reality. Marilyn Monroe could get laughs with her dumb bunny act. Yet, offscreen, she was an avid reader with strongly held leftist political views, who chose divorce when her husbands tried to limit her professional ambitions.

The 20th-century version of the "bimbo" was dim, but almost always good-hearted, exhibiting a childlike generosity to others. The innovation of the MAGA movement, however, is to make the bimbo a nasty figure, as cruel as she is dumb. In the past, what men wanted from a bimbo was someone with dog-like loyalty. For the right-wing man of our time, the craving is more for an attack dog, someone who will charge in to fight your battles, unconstrained by intellectual concerns about whether doing so makes sense.

Palin set the standard in 2008, when she was plucked out of obscurity as the governor of Alaska to serve as the presidential running mate to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. We can be more assured that Palin came by her empty-headedness naturally. During her infamous interview with Katie Couric, Palin seemed uneasy about her inability to answer basic questions about the news or civics. Soon, however, her shame turned to defiance, as crowds of base GOP voters — the kind of people we now understand to be MAGA — cheered lustily for Palin. Her fatuousness became a source of strength with that crowd because it fueled what they really loved: her ability to demonize anyone she didn't consider a "real" American. Even as she turned on McCain, Palin morphed into the fantasy attack dog the voters wanted. Ignorance is bliss, at least for bigots.

Related

From "Mar-a-Lago face" to uncanny AI art: MAGA loves ugly in submission to Trump

The mean-spirited bimbo isn't just a right-wing political project. It draws on another 21st-century innovation: the rise of shrill reality TV like "The Apprentice." There is, of course, plenty of good-natured reality TV like "Great British Bake-Off" or "Queer Eye." But MAGA's aesthetic is closer to the "Real Housewives"-style shows, where petty and cruel behavior is rewarded over human decency. It's in reality TV where the bimbo morphed from the sweet-but-stupid image portrayed by Monroe to the vindictive trophy wife who takes out her pointless grievances by throwing glasses of wine. Noem drove this home Thursday night by tweeting "Suck it" in response to a small court victory in her campaign toillegally detain and imprison immigrants.

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The vision of the wine-throwing real housewife is the stereotype that Noem has shaped herself around, pairing her expensive clothes and plastic surgery with displays of breathtaking sadism, all performed as if she is literally too stupid to know better. That's how we get pictures of Noem in full makeup with a $60,000 Rolex parading around in front of half-naked men in a torture prison, like she's a real-life "Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S." Or wearing various uniforms with full makeup and a blowout to conduct raids, earning the nickname "ICE Barbie."

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Is she smart enough to know better? Is it all an act? Is she really this brainless?

It's hard to say, but in a sense, it doesn't matter. During her Senate hearing, Noem was perfectly clear on one issue: Trump has an absolute right to rule like a dictator, and lock up whoever he wants without regard for laws, evidence and especially human rights. Being — or at least acting — too dumb to understand what she's saying helps her. It works like a shield, deflecting serious questions about her sociopathic behavior into a discussion about her IQ. After all, no one expects higher moral reasoning from someone too stupid to learn what "habeas corpus" means before testifying publicly about it. Her intelligence, as portrayed, falls below the threshold of moral accountability. The bimbo can only act on impulse, never information. In this MAGA narrative, it's liberals who are the meanies for asking more of a woman viewed as mentally incapable of handling it.

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June 2020

Rogues - True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels and Crooks

New Yorker Magazine staff writer Patrick Radden Keefelooked at crime and corruption and his preoccupation with the subject through a collection of his New Yorker essays. The Free Library of Philadelphia hosted this event

https://www.c-span.org/video/?521134-1/roges-true-stories-grifters-killers-rebels-crooks

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YOU PROFILED MARK BURNETT WHO IS RESPONSIBLE IN SOME WAYS WE HAD DONALD TRUMP AS A PRESIDENT. HE WAS THE MASTERMIND OF THE CELEBRITY APPRENTICE. YOU DO NOT GET TO HIM BUT YOU GET SO MANY WONDERFUL DETAILS ABOUT HIM. THE GOOD NEWS IS MANY PEOPLE ON THE APPRENTICE WANTED TO TALK TO YOU. I WANT TO READ THIS BECAUSE THIS IS EXTRAORDINARY TO ME. THIS IS HOLY MOLY!

A WEEKLY SERIES OF BUSINESS CHALLENGES, TRUMP WAS FREQUENTLY UNPREPARED FOR THE SESSIONS. WITH LITTLE GRASP OF WHO HAD PERFORMED WELL, SOMETIMES A CANDIDATE DISTINGUISHED HERSELF ONLY TO GET FIRED ON A WHIM BY TRUMP. THE EDITORS WERE OBLIGED TO REVERSE ENGINEER THE EPISODE SCOURING HUNDREDS OF HOURS OF FOOTAGE TO EMPHASIZE THE FEW MOMENTS WHEN THE EXEMPLARY CANDIDATE MAY HAVE SLIPPED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO ASSEMBLE AN ARTIFICIAL VERSION OF HISTORY IN WHICH TRUMP'S DECISION MADE SENSE. [LAUGHTER]

HERE IS ANOTHER THING. THE APPRENTICE PORTRAYED TRUMP AS A PLUTOCRAT WITH IMPECCABLE BUSINESS INSTINCT AND UNPARALLELED WEALTH, I TIGHTEN CLIMBING OUT OF HELICOPTERS OR INTO LIMOUSINES. WE KNOW HE WAS A FAKE, HE WENT THROUGH HOW MANY BANKRUPTCIES BUT WE MADE HIM OUT TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT PERSON IN THE WORLD. IT IS LIKE MAKING THE COURT JESTER THE KING. THAT IS THE CHEF'S KISS TO ME! WE SAW CHeaP FURNITURE IS, A CRUMBLING EMPIRE AT EVERY TURN, OUR JOB WAS TO MAKE IT SEEM OTHERWISE. HOW DID YOU COME TO THIS STORY ? Show Less Text

00:22:41

THIS WAS MY EDITOR'S IDEA AGAIN. PEOPLE COME UP WITH THEIR OWN IDEAS AND WHOSE NAMES I WOULD NEVER COME UP WITH THEIR OWN IDEAS. EVERYTHING IS HANDED TO THEM BY EDITORS. FOR ME IT IS ROUGHLY TWO OF MIND TO A MODEL OF THEIR -- TO ONE OF THEIRS.

MOST PEOPLE AGREE THAT THE APPRENTICE WHAT THIS REALLY SIGNIFICANT MOMENT IN PUTTING HIM ON THE NATIONAL STAGE AND AMPLIFYING HIS BRAND FOR A LACK OF A BETTER WORD. THE OTHER THING THAT WAS INTERESTING IS WHEN HE CAME INTO OFFICE, HE REALLY STILL THOUGHT ABOUT THE OPTICS OF REALITY TV.

WHEN HE ANNOUNCED HIS CANDIDACY, THERE IS A MOMENT WHERE HE AND MELANIA COME DOWN THE ESCALATOR AT TRUMP TOWER, THAT ACTUAL SEQUENCE, THAT HAPPENED IN THE APPRENTICE. IT WAS AN OUTTAKE. ALL OF THE SUPPORTERS WHO WERE THERE THAT DAY WERE ACTUALLY EXTRAS WHO HAD BEEN HIRED TO COME AND CHEER IN THE SAME WAY YOU WOULD FOR REALITY TV. 

he WOULD SAY  in WH shoot me LIKE THEY SHOT ME ON THE APPRENTICE. MY EDITOR SAYS IT SEEMS SO INTERESTING. THIS GUY WHO WE HAVE ALL COME TO KNOW AND LOVE OR HATE, HE EMERGED FROM THE FORGE OF REALITY TV.

THE PERSON WHO DID THIS IS THIS TOTALLY UNLIKELY, ABSOLUTE HUSTLER. THIS GUY FROM EAST LONDON WHO WAS A BRITISH PARATROOPER, HE WAS GOING TO GO AND BE A MERCENARY IN SOUTH AMERICA. HE LEFT THE MILITARY AND HIS MOTHER HAD A VISION AND SAID SHE NOT ONE HIM TO DO ANYTHING INVOLVING DUNN'S -- I WANT HIM TO DO ANYTHING INVOLVING  GUNS.HE WAS AN ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, HE BECAME A MALE NANNY WEALTHY FAMILIES IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. HE WAS THE PARATROOPER IT TURNED NANNY. -- PARATROOPER TURNED NANNY. [LAUGHTER] HE HAD A SHOW CALLED ECO-CHALLENGE AND HIS BIG BREAKTHROUGH WAS THAT THERE WAS A CRAZY SWEDISH EARLY PIONEER -- LITTLE KNOWN OUTSIDE OF SWEDEN, THIS SWEDISH SHOW CALLED EXPEDITION ROBINSON WHICH INVOLVED A BUNCH OF SWEDISH PEOPLE WHO WERE ON AN ISLAND AND HAD TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES WITH A BUNCH OF CAMERAS. BURNETT SAW IT AND HE LICENSED THE SHOW AND SAYS I WANT TO GIVE IT A NEW TITLE, SURVIVOR. FROM THERE HE DID THE APPRENTICE, HE AND TRUMP HAD THIS STRANGE RELATIONSHIP WHERE HE RECOGNIZED A CHARISMA THAT TRUMP HAD. HAD THIS AMAZING DYNAMIC. BURNETT ENDS UP IN THE SITUATION WHERE HE DID NOT WANT -- HE WOULD NOT TALK TO ME BECAUSE HE DID NOT WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH TRUMP BECAUSE HE WAS CLEARLY SO SCARED. Show Less Text

00:26:42

HE IS BORN AGAIN?

00:26:45

HIS THIRD WIFE, TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL. I LITERALLY MARRIED AN ANGEL! HE IS BORN AGAIN. A FUN DIVE INTO HOLLYWOOD. TO ME THERE WAS A DEEPER THEME IN THAT PIECE WHICH IS AT A CERTAIN POINT EVERYTHING BECAME ENTERTAINMENT. THERE IS NO SUCH THING, POLITICS IS ENTERTAINMENT BY OTHER MEANS. HE WAS AT TH EMMY'S. Show Less Text

00:27:34

HE CALLED OUT MARK BURNETT AND SAID IF HE GETS ELECTED IT IS MARK BURNETT'S FAULT. IF THERE IS A WALL, WE WILL THROW YOU OVER IT.BURNETT WENT ON TO RUN MGM. WHICH HE IS DOING TODAY. I THINK HE IS LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK....

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aha alt right event [scientology? "back to parents basements"] was about manifesting indiv grievance // 1/6?  reality TV taken to next level/step?

cdv alludes to amuse self death; reality TV prepared us for post truth world?  ruthless darwinian winners and losers?

1 22 cdv

...Consider the fascinating and, at times, undeniably entertaining characters of TrumpWorld. Donald Trump himself is a reality TV star and pro wrestling "heel" who somehow became president. He has surrounded himself with other characters straight from central casting, including corrupt consigliere Roger Stone and "America's mayor" Rudy Giuliani, now a grossly incompetent go-between and a legal adviser of dubious skill and wisdom.

It's easy to laugh, but we cannot overlook those smart and very dangerous foes of democracy such as Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn, Stephen Miller, John Eastman, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and numerous others. There are also the lesser-known true believers and ideologues who lurk in the shadows of think tanks, interest groups, academia, business and finance, the news media, right-wing evangelical churches, paramilitaries and "tactical culture," military and veterans groups, and elsewhere in the private sector and the world of public policy and consulting.

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no lnx

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The Fix

Lots of game show hosts are outspoken conservatives. But why?

By

Philip Bump

September 16, 2015

Before his foreign policy speech from the deck of the U.S.S. Iowa on Tuesday, Donald Trump was introduced by no less a Hollywood star than Wink Martindale. Yes, the Wink Martindale.

Hm? Oh. He was a game show host. The problem with being a game show host is that it's mostly bloopers that become immortal, so here's a clip of Martindale in his heyday, stumbling over the word "orangutan."

On Tuesday, Martindale told Trump's audience a few jokes and then introduced the "National Anthem Girl" to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner." Light work for a long-time host.

But why Trump? Martindale joins a surprisingly crowded phalanx of former and current game show hosts who get involved in politics -- many representing the conservative side of the spectrum.

The most vocal is Chuck Woolery, one-time host of "Love Connection," who now spends an awful lot of time on Twitter bad-mouthing President Obama and the left. (Woolery's Twitter background is the Constitution and an American flag.)

Pat Sajak has used money earned as host of "Wheel of Fortune" to make large campaign contributions to Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Sajak also offers his critiques of climate change on Twitter.

There's Drew Carey, the host of "The Price is Right," who contributed regularly to former Ohio governor and senator George Voinovich (R) and backed Ron Paul's 2008 presidential bid. The man that preceded him in that job, Bob Barker, endorsed Florida Rep. David Jolly (R) in Jolly's special election fight in 2013. "Jeopardy"'s Alex Trebek has also given to Republicans, though he says that he's politically independent. Ben "Bueller?" Stein hosted "Win Ben Stein's Money" well after he was a well-known Hollywood conservative. (The emcee of that show? A younger Jimmy Kimmel.)

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Last year, in the wake of Sajak's climate tweets, the Daily Beast's Rebecca Dana wrote perhaps the definitive piece on politically active conservative game show hosts. "To have the right sensibility to be a game-show host, you do have to have a belief in rugged individualism," Indiana University professor Olaf Hoerschelmann told her. "Either you make it or you’re not worth it."

Maybe! But there's another possibility. Maybe the people listed above are well-to-do, older white men who mostly live in Southern California, which is about as concise a description of "someone likely to be a Republican" as is possible. Oh, and they're vocal.

After all, there's some selection bias at play here. Regis Philbin, former "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" host, has made donations to a Republican -- and a Democrat. Tom Bergeron, who hosts 42,000 shows at any given moment, mostly gives to Democrats. The late Richard Dawson of "Family Feud" was a strong liberal, as was "Match Game's" Gene Rayburn. Perhaps there are disproportionately more Republicans in the ranks of former game show hosts. Perhaps there are more now. Perhaps we just notice them more and read into it.

Like with Wink Martindale. BuzzFeed's Rosie Gray reports that Martindale was there because he'd been invited to speak by a friend with ties to a group called "Friends of Abe" -- and that Martindale wasn't doing it because of Trump. "Don’t know him, just appreciate what he’s saying," Martindale said, "and in large regard, many points I agree with, some of course I don’t."

That's the sort of even-handed geniality you might expect from a game show host.

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aha tweets are more infotainment than info?

walter benjamin on nazi art

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trumpism

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aha/DOH:

XO

9/20 aha, fash-y, strong man acting alone: trump loves signing things foto op with fawning followers (he leaches gravitas, assent/ applause from them) maybe experts who look like they know what they're doing, but congress deadlocked/polarysys (in pocket of corps that want to continue extract $ HMO]  and does not want to ACT, just make it look like he HAS many eg neglected but typical: gop beat up bad 2018 blue wave on pre-existing conds, to trump pretends to defend AT THE SAME TIME still trying to kill ACA that actually provides; also visual, reality TV apprentice-like

trump mocked for finally releasing ‘health care plan’ — which is really a ‘toothless’ executive order

David Badash / The New Civil Rights Movement  September 25, 2020

For at least four years President Donald Trump has been promising the American people a health care plan. He famously sat for the “60 Minutes” cameras just days after the…

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/the-mark-burnett-reality-tv-presidency/

hnn

we can now be reasonably sure that we have more accurate information about President Donald J. Trump's financial situation—that he has often paid remarkably little in taxes, that he is not as successful a businessman as he has frequently claimed, and that he may soon have to come up with money to pay off huge debts. However, as a historian of entrepreneurship, I find the most interesting revelation is that the British-born but self-proclaimed self-made American Mark Burnett rescued Trump when he picked the future president for a starring role on The Apprentice, which launched in 2004. This reality television show followed Burnett's Survivor (2000- ) but preceded Shark Tank (2009- ).

From a working-class background and without a college education, Burnett arrived in the United States in 1982. He quickly persuaded a wealthy Beverly Hills family to hire him as a nanny, having convinced them that his experience as a member of an elite paratrooper force in Ireland and the Falkland Islands meant they were getting a nanny and security guard all-in-one. A job as a nanny for a second wealthy family, this time in Malibu, enabled him to hone his skills as an apprentice to the household's head who provided contacts and information and, eventually, a job in his insurance office. That job helped Burnett realize such employment would neither make him rich nor sate his adventuresome restlessness.

A critical element in the narrative of his own life that Burnett has offered was the role Trump played in motivating him. He insisted that reading The Art of the Deal (1987) had inspired him "to jump in, take risks, and pursue a career as an entrepreneur." Trump returned the favor, not only by agreeing to star in The Apprentice, but also by writing an introduction to Burnett's Jump In! Even If You Don't Know How to Swim (2005), which the real estate tycoon described as "the inspirational rags-to-riches story of an American immigrant." Burnett, he continued, was someone who "transformed hard work and an inspired vision into the realization of the American dream." The values Burnett promoted in Survivor, The Apprentice, and Shark Tank were ones Burnett and Trump shared.However, though they were reliable in producing successful reality TV programs, they do not work as well in governing a nation in crisis or in sustaining a Hollywood career.

As Ben Smith wrote in the New York Times on October 19th, 2020, "like his greatest creation, Mr. Trump—who sought and then lost an idiotic ratings war on Thursday night with Joe Biden—Mr. Burnett seems to be struggling to keep his grip on the cultural moment." It has now been almost ten years since Burnett last hit it big. Both of them have done their best to deploy religion to shore up their careers. Recently Trump controversially, and some say cynically, held up a Bible for a photo op at St. John's Church. In 2013 Burnett produced The Bible for the History Channel, casting his third wife, Roma Downey, as the Virgin Mary. "An earnest but shallow take on the Greatest Story ever Told," one commentator remarked, "The Bible suffers from leaden pacing and mediocre special effects."

The selection of Trump as the host of The Apprentice assured Burnett's success as a television producer but more significantly for the nation and the world helped rescue Trump from an uncertain economic fate and eventually elevated him into the presidency. Burnett had contributed to Barack Obama's campaign but resisted pressure in late 2016 to release potentially damaging tapes of The Apprentice that ended up on the cutting room floor. During the fall of 2016 Burnett criticized Trump when he remarked that "my wife and I reject the hatred, division and misogyny that has been a very unfortunate part of his campaign." Once Trump was in the White House, Burnett danced a delicate dance to avoid alienating the president and harming his own brand.

Before Trump began firing people on The Apprentice, his brand, especially outside the world of real estate, was not very valuable. That changed dramatically in the show's first year, when his appearances brought him almost $12 million, a figure that increased dramatically to almost $48 million in 2005. From that high point, the numbers drifted downward and he may well have launched his successful bid for the presidency not seeking to achieve that high office, but to restore the luster and power of his brand.

Whether or not entrepreneurship can rescue the nation from the intertwined threats of the COVID-19 pandemic, an economic meltdown, and a potentially contested election outcome remains to be seen. So far, it appears that what is needed is less neoliberal self-government in which entrepreneurship plays the central role and more vigorous action by the federal government.

Moreover, it remains to be seen what results Burnett and Trump have wrought. On November 3rd, American voters will have to decide whether Trump will be a survivor or whether they want to say to the apprentice president, "You're Fired."

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/trump-is-using-the-tricks-of-reality-tv-against-a-and-its-not-going-well/

it’s hardly new or revelatory to say this, but it’s critical to remember the role that “The Apprentice” played in turning Donald Trump, a notoriously bad businessman with a string of bankruptcies, into an American icon of capitalist success. Everything from careful editing to set designers giving the dreary Trump Organization offices a glow-up came together to create the illusion of success where only failure and mediocrity had been before.

It was an experience so profound for Trump that he did something highly unusual: He learned something. He absorbed the idea that a well-constructed illusion of competence gets you all the benefits of being accomplished, without having to do the hard work of actually achieving anything.

Unfortunately, it was a lesson we are all paying the price for now.

On Thursday evening, the New York Times published an exposé about how the Trump White House forced the CDC to publish dangerously misleading coronavirus testing recommendationson its website.  the new “guidance said it was not necessary to test people without symptoms of Covid-19 even if they had been exposed to the virus,” Apoorva Mandavilli writes, noting that actual public health experts at the agency strenuously objected because the virus is often spread by asymptomatic people and vigorous testing is crucial to preventing that.

It’s not hard to see that Trump’s reality TV instincts fueled this effort to discourage coronavirus testing. Trump has made clear from the beginning of this pandemic that he would prefer to leave as many coronavirus cases on the editing-room floor as possible, and he thinks the best way to do that is to keep people from getting tested. Trump truly believes that the best way to get coronavirus numbers down is not by preventing people from getting infected in the first place, but by hiding the true number of cases and juking the stats.

Even during this week’s town hall hosted by ABC News, Trump asserted this belief, claiming that the only reason the U.S. has more 20% of the world’s coronavirus cases (despite having only 4.5% of the world’s population) is that “we do much more testing.”

Of course, the U.S. also has more than 20% of the world’s deaths, a fact that exposes that Trump’s instincts aren’t just immoral, but wrong. Those dead Americans tell the real story of what’s happening, and no amount of trying to monkey with the numbers is going to change that.

Trump is also playing the reality TV game with the vaccine. He has been dropping hints for weeks, reality TV-style, that there will be a shocking and heartwarming twist right before the election, which he clearly views as the penultimate episode of this “season,” in which he will dramatically unveil the vaccine that will save us all and also ensure his re-election. He’s even used CDC resources to prop up this insinuation that the big vaccine reveal is coming, right in the nick of time.

“You could have a very big surprise coming up,” Trump said in a press conference last week.

“We’re going to have a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date. You know what date I’m talking about,” he added. Gee, I have no idea. What date could he possibly mean?

It’s doubtful that Trump cares, one way or another, that he’s making empty promises. In reality TV, it’s normal to hype some big revelation to lure in viewers for the next episode, only to produce some anticlimactic nothing-burger. All that matters is sucking people in, not delivering them what was promised.

Trump’s playing the same game here. He doesn’t care that there won’t be anything close to a readily available vaccine this year. He just wants to hype that idea long enough to somehow scrape out an election victory, legitimate or otherwise, at which point he’ll not only abandon the idea entirely, but most likely interfere with the process of getting one safely on the market.

But of course, trying to deceive people about their own health and lives isn’t just reality TV sleaze. It’s a deeply immoral gambit that appears to have given the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, a minor crisis of conscience. At least Redfield he wasn’t willing to lie to Congress flat out, and told the obvious truth that even if a vaccine is approved this year, it probably won’t be widely available until the middle of 2021. He also encouraged mask-wearing, even though Trump seems to think every mask applied to a face is an eff-you personally directed at him.

Trump, as usual, reacted poorly to someone trying to pierce his poorly constructed illusion of competent leadership. He responded by claiming that Redfield had “made a mistake” and offered “incorrect information.”

This is just another example of Trump treating the leaders of important government institutions not as if they were public servants, but as if they were TV producers whose main job is to clean up Trump’s image, cover for his ignorant mistakes and odious statements, and present him to the public as the brilliant statesman he absolutely is not.

Much has been written about the hard work that it took for the team on “The Apprentice” to conceal Trump’s repugnant personality and mediocrity as a businessman.

“What we did, that was a scam,” Bill Pruitt, a former producer on “The Apprentice,” said in the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” which explored how the people behind that show used TV magic to make Trump seem smart and accomplished.

“If you walked around Trump’s actual office in Trump Tower you’d see the wood’s chipped, and what’s that smell?” Pruitt added, noting, “It wasn’t the empire we were going to have to sell to people. We needed to gussy it up a bit. And we did.”

“Most of us knew he was a fake,” Jonathan Braun, another producer, told The New Yorker. “But we made him out to be the most important person in the world. It was like making the court jester the king.”

In a 2017 essay about “The Apprentice,” New Yorker TV critic Emily Nussbaum wrote that “the Trump of ‘The Apprentice’ receives endless praise, even behind his back. All scandal and debt are erased; Trump’s combative streak is alchemized into Daddy’s tough love.”

For Trump, being a fake success is better than being a real success. For one thing, it’s less work. For another, it feels like cheating the system, and Trump loves to believe he’s doing that. So even with the death toll from the pandemic closing in on 200,000 Americans, Trump still clings to this notion that he doesn’t need to actually do anything about it. He just wants someone to come in and edit reality to make it look like he’s doing something.

While it was undeniably hard work for the team at “The Apprentice” to present this false image of Trump-the-competent-businessman, they at least had the benefit of being able to contain the illusion within the rectangular frame of the TV screen.

The real world, it turns out, is too big to be captured and controlled in an editing bay. Trump’s increasingly futile efforts to make the pandemic disappear through reality-TV antics keep running up into the biological realities of people who get sicker and sicker, wind up in hospital ICUs and then on respirators, and then die. Trump can’t hide that his management of this crisis has been a total failure, and on some lizard brain level, he seems to understand that he’s unpopular. That’s why his next big gambit is to try to replace the real election, which he would almost certainly lose, with a fake one where he’s declared the winner.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/06/the-tale-of-a-right-wing-scam-artists-downward-trajectory

no lnx vod?

tale of a right-wing scam artist’s downward trajectory

Written by Roger Sollenberger / Salon June 5, 2020

I didn’t want to report this in the first person, but here we are.

Last week I received a press release from right-wing internet troll Jacob Wohl and his decades-older partner, conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman, announcing a stunt so outlandish it did not come close to the level of publication. I could track down only one other journalist who received the press release, and no one wrote about it.

Is there a common denominator? There is. In recent weeks, that other journalist, Jared Holt, and I have both published articles about Wohl’s looming trial for criminal securities fraud in California, as well as his liability for non-payment on a 2017 judgment in Arizona, which also involved securities violations.

Wohl and a former business partner pleaded not guilty to two counts of securities fraud this February in front of a judge in Riverside, California. Their trial has been extensively delayed, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic.

Additionally, the Arizona Corporation Commission — in conjunction with the Arizona attorney general’s office and legal counsel in California — is actively pursuing Wohl with regards to the $43,000 he still owes the state.

After I posted the second story to Twitter, a user comment pointed me to a since-deleted tweet from a woman named Kristin, who claimed to have worked with Wohl and Burkman on some of their infamously hapless public defamation stunts in the past.

For those unfamiliar with this sordid history, Wohl and Burkman have convinced, coerced and/or paid a number of real people to accuse their political enemies du jour of wrongdoing, most often in the form of absurd acts of sexual impropriety or assault in hotel rooms.

For instance, they accused former special counsel Robert Mueller of raping a woman in a New York hotel room in 2010. They claimed that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had carried on a BDSM-flavored extramarital affair with a young Marine in a Massachusetts Hilton in August 2018. They tricked a young man into signing an affidavit claiming that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg sexually assaulted him at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington in 2019, an allegation the young man immediately recanted, saying that Wohl and Burkman had deceived him.

Most recently the duo appears to have paid a young woman thousands of dollars to accuse Dr. Anthony Fauci, the 79-year-old head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of sexually assaulting her in a Baltimore hotel room in 2014.

Fabrications not confined to hotel rooms include Nancy Pelosi’s Percocet addiction and Sen. Ted Cruz’s “swinger” lifestyle.

None of those accusations, or any of the others, bear any known relationship to reality. Here’s a detailed rundown.link

But “Kristin,” the Twitter account, claimed that this rolling smear campaign was just a reality show. What’s more, they had actually recruited her, Kristin said, though she did not actually participate in any Wohl-Burkman scams.

In one tweet, Kristin wrote, “I have nothing but good things to say about them (and everything was platonic and I was treated well). People shouldn’t judge this girl for backing out because it’s a scary thing to do, nor should they make assumptions about Wohl and Burkman’s intentions.”

Kristin’s Twitter bio described her as a “Model, mom and paralegal. Marylander for life:)”. She had only one follower, and followed about 50 accounts, mostly right-wing media and political figures, including Jacob Wohl’s father, David.

Lo and behold, she had left her direct messages open, allowing anyone to contact her.

At this point I was already about 110% sure that Kristin was actually Jacob Wohl. I reached out.

“Can I get back to you on this?” Kristin replied.

“Sure,” I said. “When’s a good time, do you think?”

“As soon as I figure out how I’m going to handle everything,” she said.

“OK,” I responded. “Let me know.”

I didn’t hear anything until the next day, when Kristin returned to say, “OK, I’ll talk with you. Do you have a number? I had to talk with my lawyers first and decide if I should come out with everything.”

Kristin gave me her number, but I hadn’t seen the new messages. She found my phone number online and called me that night — definitely a woman’s voice. I couldn’t talk, but we set another time.

My wife is a politics hound who also follows Wohl, so I thought she’d get a kick out of this strange tale. I assumed, egotistically, that the whole thing was some weird Wohlian attempt to sting me or weave me into their next farce.

When she saw Kristin’s profile picture, though, her mouth dropped: My wife knew Kristin, who was a real person. They both went to suburban Maryland high schools and had 53 Facebook friends in common, including her closest friends.

Kristin’s full name is Kristin Spealman, and her Twitter bio is accurate: She’s a single mom, a model and paralegal living in Maryland. At various points, she has also been Nancy Pelosi’s drug dealer and Ted Cruz’s concubine.

Spealman told me in a phone call that Burkman cold-called her last September, havingfound her through a local modeling agency.

“He said he worked with Spike TV,” she said. “He said he wanted to meet me. He wanted to talk about this reality show.”

Spealman said she agreed to meet Burkman and Wohl for dinner and drinks at Morton’s Steakhouse in Bethesda, Maryland. Burkman sent a limo. Spealman said she had filet mignon, Burkman had salmon, and Jacob, at the time on a carnivore diet he has since abandoned, had a porterhouse steak — “and gave me his asparagus.”

“We all drank a bit,” she added. Burkman paid with an American Express “Black” card, she said.

At that dinner, Burkman seemed in charge. “I thought Jacob was Jack’s intern at first,” she said. “Just the way he was ordering the limos, stuff like that.” (Spealman shared pictures of what she characterized as her contemporaneous notes, with a ? under the name “Jacob.”)

“There are only like four good-looking girls in D.C.,” she recalls Burkman saying to her. “They were saying they wanted to make me the star of season one of their new reality show.”

The show, she said, would be called“Project 1599,” the street number of Burkman’s home in Arlington, Virginia.The moniker is also his apparently now-prohibited Twitter handle. Burkman was suspended from the site earlier this year for spreading harmful misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. Wohl’s official account was suspended what feels like ages ago.

“Project 1599,” she said, was to be billed as something like a sensationalized political version of the celebrity prank show “Punk’d.” They told her it would air on Spike TV, a network that no longer existed at the time — it had disappeared the year before and re-emerged as the Paramount Network.

(Project 1599 was also the name of the entity that emailed me the recent press release.)

Spealman recalled that Burkman told her she stood to make between $200,000 and $300,000 for season one of Project 1599, which would be released in January 2020. She pointed out that if she became a big star, she would be useless as an incognito prankster. They told her they’d film everything beforehand.

It isn’t insane to entertain the idea that Wohl and Burkman at one point might have had something going at some level with someone at the Paramount Network. They made this same pitch about Spike TV to another recruit. Their accusations against political figures are so ridiculous, and their press conferences so clownish and cheekily scripted, that it seems like reality TV already. They’re clearly in on the joke, on some level.

On another level, of course, there’s no joke for anybody to be “in on.”

At any rate, Spealman signed on. The trio met a few more times, always in the D.C. area and, perhaps in keeping — consciously or otherwise — with a running theme of the smears, always in hotel rooms. Wohl, she said, had a room that he liked at the W. But there were no more meals, she says, only vodka drinks, which were always provided at those afternoon meet-ups.

“Jacob did more of the talking after that,” she said. “And the story soon became that I would come out and say that I was selling painkillers to Nancy Pelosi.”

“I was shocked,” Spealman said. “I was like, ‘Look, I thought this was a different kind of show.’ They asked me to lose weight, to get down to 96 pounds — I’m 103, but they wanted me down to 96, to do talk shows like Ellen DeGeneres.”

Spealman’s idea of stardom was not to appear at a press conference falsely claiming to have sold lethal doses of opioids to the 79-year-old speaker of the House. Burkman offered to talk to any judges for her, should any lawsuits ensue, but she declined.

“That’s when they changed it to the affair with Ted Cruz,” she said. “Which I was also supposed to do.”

They picked Cruz, she said, because the purported reality show’s purported producers wanted to make sure the attacks were not all against Democrats.

“I have lawyers,” Spealman said. “My friends are lawyers, I am a part-time paralegal. I was worried about lawsuits, you know? I expressed that to them and they said ‘This is political satire. If you really feel uncomfortable, in a few weeks you can just come out and say this was all a fake thing.'”

“They said it was performance art,” she said. “So it’s free speech.”

To assure her, she said, Wohl and Burkman offered to make an audio recording of her agreeing to “do something” for money. That way, they said, she’d have evidence it was fake.

It’s unclear whether Wohl and Burkman still have that recording. Neither would comment.

“Jacob was the main manipulator,” Spealman said. “But both were very aggressive.”

She feels intimidated by the duo to this day, and would not readily talk about anything beyond the events of last fall.

Burkman and Wohl scheduled a press conference for mid-October, and on Oct. 16 Spealman went to Burkman’s duplex-style house in Arlington to go over the script.

“When I got there to work on the script, it said at the top, ‘Affidavit of Kristin Spealman.’ That threw me off because I thought it was supposed to be a script,” she said. “I took pics of it, and that made them uncomfortable but I said I needed them to rehearse.”

She later showed those photos to her lawyers, she said, who “freaked out.”

At the rehearsal, Spealman said, Wohl showed her a check for $150,000, which he said would be hers if she went through with the lie as scripted — a claim corroborated by what she said were contemporaneous notes, which she shared in another picture.

Spealman said it appeared to be a business check, not a personal check, but Wohl only briefly allowed her to look at it.

She also shared her photos of the “script,” which is labeled “statement of fact and belief” and, except for the name, is identical to the one they later distributed at the press conference.

In an aside, Spealman noted that Burkman’s dog — a chocolate-colored dachshund named Jack Jr. — took a shine to her.

“Jack said that Jack Jr. doesn’t like many people,” said Spealman, who is blonde. “He told me it must be my Aryan blood.”

“It was weird,” she added. (Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, who claims to be half-Jewish and who made an appearance at the Cruz-themed press event staged by Wohl and Burkman — both Jewish — had threatened to kill Jack Jr. earlier this year; Spealman says she never met him.)

Spealman says she told Burkman via text that she was backing out. He called her dozens of times, she said, saying, “This is your big shot.”

“But I never said I wanted a big shot,” she told me.

They rescheduled the press conference, Spealman said — disappointing a gaggle of bored and cynical journalists — swapping her out for “another model in Virginia,” from her same agency, who read the same script, though she used an assumed name.

But then there’s this observation from that same Wohl press event, as noted by journalist Molly Jong-Fast: “Across the street was a documentary film crew who wouldn’t tell me anything about themselves. They were probably just following some sort of Prime Directive where they didn’t want to tarnish the art by becoming part of it. Who can say.”

Spealman saw Wohl again after that, she says, at the Nov. 7 opening for a club called Pandora, which Spealman had brought Wohl in to promote. That’s documented in an Instagram photo.

At the end of that conversation, Kristin leveled with me: She had known we had friends in common, and yes, she knew my wife, though not very well.

Here is why I wanted to write this in the first person.

When Wohl and Burkman accused Robert Mueller of raping a woman in New York, Brett Kavanaugh and Roy Moore were in the headlines. Wohl went to great lengths to try to bait reporters into covering his bogus claims about Mueller, which appeared to be a media honey-trap as much as anything else.

In other words, I’m reluctant to give these guys attention, but at the same time I couldn’t be sure this wasn’t worth writing about, because, as I learned, another smear might be in the works. Allegedly.

Of course the existence of a smear doesn’t mean it is worth covering. But the credible prospect of a possible unlawful future action is another matter.

Still, I wondered if Wohl was setting me up — a thought I relished, until I learned Kristin and my wife had so many connections, which turned my eagerness to a combination of concern and confusion.

Around the same time I contacted Kristin, I received Twitter messages from an account calling itself “Blackbird Consulting,” which had two followers and claimed to be enforcing collection actions against Wohl.

That account has since been suspended. A Twitter spokesperson did not immediately reply to questions about the circumstances.

As for that “model in Virginia” — I found her. Her name is Kylie Garcia-Andrews. She told me in a phone call that Wohl and Burkman had paid her $700 cash to sing the national anthem at an Oct. 9, 2019, press event where Wohl and Burkman trotted out a young man to accuse Sen. Kamala Harris of adultery.

Garcia-Andrews deleted an old Instagram post that linked to that performance — and hashtagged Spike TV.

But despite looking exactly like the woman who took Spealman’s place at the Cruz event, Garcia-Andrews says she was not that woman. Spealman says she was, and here is a video of Wohl calling that woman “Kylie.”

Ford Fischer, an independent journalist and prolific Wohl watcher whose video was linked in the above Instagram post, told me that Garcia-Andrews had friended him last October on Facebook.

“I didn’t know who she was relative to Facebook, but from the bit we talked it seems she was actually at Wohl’s pressers twice: once to sing the anthem, and once as a ‘Ted Cruz accuser,'” he told me, sharing a screenshot that showed they became Facebook friends on Oct. 15, smack in the middle of the Kamala Harris and Ted Cruz events.

“Kylie is a more common name than you may realize,” Kylie told me in a text message denying her involvement in the Cruz stunt. “I mean kylie Jenner has her name on literally everything. It still doesn’t prove its me.” [sic]

The rest of this gets even muddier than what you’ve read already. I feel obligated to report what I was told on the record because it regards potential unlawful conduct involving a public figure. Or so I’m told. But here it is, deconflicted as best as possible.

Spealman, who shared a text-message conversation showing she had been in touch with Wohl as recently as this spring, told me that Wohl and Burkman had been planning “an ongoing thing” with Garcia-Andrews.

“She still does stuff with them,” Spealman said.

Spealman did not feel comfortable detailing what she knew, she said, in part because “it would ruin something they’re doing in the future.” She says she decided to come forward because she wants to distance herself from Wohl and Burkman after experiencing harassment online, while making clear she holds no bad feelings against them

She said she had originally been “asked to be involved” in Wohl and Burkman’s new stunt, adding, “What’s to come is even worse.”

“There’s something ongoing with that doctor at the White House,” Spealman said, evidently meaning Fauci. Wohl and Burkman’s attempted smear of Fauci, earlier this year drew press coverage from only one outlet, and was almost immediately debunked by the woman they paid to carry it out.

Or so it seemed: Spealman told me the whole confession was fake, a setup for a journalist.

After our phone conversation last week, Spealman called Burkman. She says she also tried Wohl, who did not answer.

Following her conversation with Burkman, Spealman told me that Garcia-Andrews said she didn’t want me to write about her because, she claimed, a murderer was after her.

For her part, Garcia-Andrews rejected Spealman’s claim that she was involved in a new “project” with Burkman and Wohl. “They seem shady,” Garcia-Andrews said. “They don’t seem like the best types of guys, so I don’t want to be associated with them.”

Spealman echoed those concerns. “I’m worried about them blackmailing me,” she said. “Jacob created an audio recording of us in a conversation when they offered me $25,000 to do something — I don’t remember what.” She’s worried he may leak that recording to smear her in the press. She also claims to have received ominous phone calls after we began talking — “People breathing into the phone and hanging up” — and believes her computer was hacked.

All things considered, though, there is something strikingly unfair about the position these two women find themselves in, it seems to me. The targets of Wohl and Burkman’s defamatory attacks can afford to ignore them. But the men and women coerced or conscripted to do their dirty work are almost powerless.

But as another Wohl pawn Diane Andrade recently made clear, even if fraudulently, as Spealman claims, they do hold an ace: information.

Spealman said that, depending on what happens after this article is published, she and Kylie might decide to start talking about the other things they know, which, she assures me, are much worse.

She shared some text messages with Wohl about the press release I mentioned above, which I will not be reporting on. She says the subject of that press release is not the same as the alleged new plot they tried to convince her to join.

I find Spealman more credible than Wohl or Burkman, but am also wary of giving them more oxygen for any reason, or playing even a small role in furthering their game.

In 2019, the Daily Beast obtained a document from January of that year showing thatWohl had created a group called the Arlington Center for Political Intelligence, whose purpose, he said, would be to “make shit up” about candidates and public figures in order to manipulate political betting markets and seek to suppress Democratic turnout in 2020.

First Amendment attorney Anne Champion told me, “It would appear that the premise of this company amounts to wire fraud.”

Wohl was soliciting $1 million to fund the project. His smears — and promises of major payouts — kicked into high gear that fall. As his trial date for defrauding investors now approaches, they might kick in again. It is unclear what returns any Arlington Center investors might see or expect at this point, several months ahead of a presidential election.

As for the alleged plot looming on the horizon, Spealman and Garcia-Andrews seem to agree on one thing: The new project, whatever it is — if it ever existed — is now, thanks apparently to my one week of investigation, moribund. So there’s no need to worry about it, whatever it was.

Spokespeople for Dr. Fauci, Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Harris, Sen. Warren and Sen. Cruz all declined to comment, as did a former spokesperson for Robert Mueller’s office, the FBI, and multiple spokespeople for Paramount Networks.

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman declined to comment, and would not acknowledge that they knew the women.

==

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/these-documents-are-a-likely-source-of-jacob-wohls-legal-troubles/

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/04/trump-doesnt-know-how-to-be-president-so-hes-drafted-us-all-into-the-reality-tv-show-in-his-mind/

no lnx

Trump doesn’t know how to be president — so he’s drafted us all into the reality TV show in his mind

Written by Cody Fenwick April 24, 2020

After all this time, he still hasn’t figured out how to do the job.

President Donald Trump entered the White House as a political neophyte, and he’s shown perhaps the worst learning curve of any of his predecessors. Despite the fact that it feels as though the past three years of his presidency had enough news and revelations to fill several decades, the complex workings of the federal government remain an opaque mystery to the commander in chief, the man at the center of it all.

And it’s dreadful time to have a man so incompetent steering the ship of state. A public health crisis on the scale of COVID-19 is virtually unprecedented, and it requires all the skill and power that the administration has to offer to handle it well. We need health experts, diplomats, the military, emergency responders, manufacturers, universities, state governments, local leaders, spokespeople, the criminal justice system, foreign governments, international agencies and more all coordinated together working toward the suppression and destruction of the virus. It’s a monumental undertaking, and the president of the United States is the only person who can lead the pack. Even the most skilled of the president’s predecessors would strain under the challenge, but Trump doesn’t have a prayer.

In fact, he’s barely even trying. He’s told states they’re on their own to get crucial medical supplies and to establish testing regimes, which will be essential to coming safely out of lockdown. He said he has total authority, but he wants to leave the big choices up to the states. We should think of the federal government only as a “backup,” he said.

He likely doesn’t have the ability to coordinate all the relevant actors, tap into the expertise of the administration, and craft a long-term strategy for fighting the pandemic and saving as much of the economy as possible. But regardless of whether he could do what is needed, it’s clear that he’s not interested in this hard work.

Instead, he wants the quick fix. That’s at least part of the reason why he latched on to the idea that hydroxychloroquine might be a miracle cure for COVID-19, despite a paucity of evidence (whether or not there were financial motives behind his advocacy for the drug will have to be determined at a later time). The urge for the quick fix is why he assumed the virus would never become a problem in the first place, that it would go away in April, that the lockdowns could end by Easter.

And on Thursday, this desire for the quick fix manifested itself in the most bizarre, dangerous, and self-parodic form yet. Trump suggested from the White House briefing room that UV light or heat might be used or applied to the body, perhaps internally, to treat the disease. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, looked simply bemused at the suggestion. Even more bizarrely, Trump suggested that scientists should investigate whether injecting humans with disinfectants could treat the illness, an obviously absurd and outright hazardous idea. To even suggest it on national television with the authority of the presidency is an act of blatant negligence.

I’m still stunned that he actually said it. If someone had a few days ago joked that Trump would suggest injecting household cleaners as his next potential treatment after hydroxychloroquine, it would have been brushed off as an over-the-top quip. But he actually said it.

So why did he say it? What compels him to float such desperate ideas?

Some of it is just an overabundance of ego. “I’m not a doctor, but I’m like a person that has a good… you know what,” Trump said after his unsolicited medical advice, pointing to his head.

But that’s not all of it. An egotistical president could simply build their own self-esteem by working hard to fight the pandemic and be seen as a strong leader in so doing. Many governors across the country are seeing their approval rates rise as they lead heir states through the crisis.

Without the patience of the discipline to do what’s required, though, Trump reverts to what he knows best: reality TV. Journalist Marcy Wheeler pointed to one quote from Trump’s briefing where he perfectly encapsulated what he thinks he’s doing by promoting his every whim as a possible coronavirus panacea.

He referred a recently conducted study That evaluated the ability of sunlight and disinfectants to kill the virus — on surfaces and in the air, not in humans — saying that this is where he got his wild ideas.

“It’s just a suggestion, from a brilliant lab, by a very, very smart, perhaps brilliant, man,” Trump said. “He’s talking about sun, he’s talking about heat. And you see the numbers. So that’s it. That’s all I have. I’m just here to present talent. I’m here to present ideas. Because we want ideas to get rid of this thing.” [Emphasis added.]

Wheeler noted: “He’s still running a Reality TV show.”

And this is how things work on a reality TV show. Someone comes up with a wacky idea, somehow they make it work, they impress the judges, and they move on to the next round. On “The Apprentice,” Trump got to pick whichever contestant jumped through all the right hoops to be the winner. By the following episode, no one cared what came before — and it was on to the next wacky idea.

Trump ran his businesses this way, too. He moved from venture to venture, product to product. He ran casinos into the ground, he promoted a pyramid scheme, he slapped his name on a fake university. While many of these businesses fell through or went bankrupt, Trump kept gaining in fame, which he could always leverage into the next venture.

And now that’s the way he’s running the country. He says it’s all he has — try longshot ideas, see if they work (even when they obviously won’t work), move on to the next while manipulating the media. But of course, that’s not all he has. He has the federal government at his disposal, and he can work with Congress to expand his capability to fight the virus and the recession even further. And yet he’s been totally uninvolved. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has been the primary administration negotiator on Capitol Hill as Congress passed relief bills; the president’s biggest contribution was signing the legislation without a fight.

He won’t actually do the job of being president, but he’ll play one on TV.And because the electoral college favored him in 2016, and the Senate refused to remove him from his position in 2020, every American is forced to become a supporting character in the reality TV show of his mind.

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/anti-choice-republican-reality-tv-star-leverages-trump-pardon-in-attempt-to-unseat-john-lewis/

no lnx

Anti-choice Republican reality TV star leverages Trump pardon in attempt to unseat John Lewis

Written by Jessica Sutherland / Daily Kos March 8, 2020

A rabid anti-choicer and vanity press publisher has entered the political fray just weeks after being pardoned by Donald Trump for her role in a car theft ring. In a move that’s certain to get her disinvited to every cookout ever, Angela Stanton-King qualified Friday as the Republican challenger to the inimitable Rep. John Lewis in Georgia’s 5th District, which encompasses most of Atlanta, and is 60% African American. (Lewis also has a challenger from the far left.) Ten Republicans have tried and failed to end the civil rights icon’s 33 years of service in the U.S. House, but Stanton-King, a BET reality show cast member who first made headlines after self-publishing not one, but two books that bashed another reality star, seems convinced that she’s the one who will succeed.

In an interview with Atlanta’s 11Alive, Stanton-King didn’t hesitate to dismiss the lifelong fight of Lewis, a bonafide national treasure. “With all respect to Congressman Lewis, when I think about him, I always have that image in my mind when he was on the Selma Bridge,” Trump’s newest black friend said, seemingly unaware that Lewis had commemorated the 55th anniversary of the historic “Bloody Sunday” bridge crossing—which left him with a cracked skull—in Alabama just five days earlier, and that the actual anniversary was hours away.

“The truth of the matter is,” she rambled on, purporting to speak for all black people with her attempt to force the vocal Trump opponent into retirement, “with all that he has given towards the fight for civil rights—which we greatly appreciate—these are no longer the days of marching over the Selma Bridge.”

So who is this woman? Stanton-King is a three-time convicted felon who served about two years in prison; she was pardoned by Trump on Feb. 18, in the same batch of pardons that “cleared” corrupt former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. With a whoosh of the Sharpie fumes that accompany Trump’s signature, the author says, she became eligible to run for federal office, which she claims is a lifelong dream. (She was always eligible.)

Notably, Stanton-King, who was born in 1977, appears to have gone by just “Stanton” until very recently—as an author, as a reality star, in her shady self-publishing business that promises to make any writer’s bestseller dreams come true for a fee, and even her Twitter handle.

After 20 years of living and being treated like a felon for committing a non-violent crime that I have paid my dues for. I stand before you today w/ a clean slate and a restored name.

My name is Angela Stanton-King

& I will beat your ass about MY President! #Trump2020 ????

— Angela Stanton-King (@theangiestanton) February 28, 2020

So where does the “King” come from? Apparently, she borrowed it from Alveda King, the self-described “pro-life warrior” and Trump Black Friend™ who “knows he’s not racist.” King is the niece of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a proud Republican. Alveda King, a member of Donald Trump’s Frederick Douglass Bicentennial Commission, has long been reviled for her “work” and surname-dropping within the conservative realm, which includes appearing on Fox News, doing a rally with Glenn Beck, and even bashing her aunt, the late, great Coretta Scott King.

In 1994, she released a letter condemning Coretta Scott King’s support for abortion and gay rights, saying it would bring “curses on your house and your people … cursing, vexation, rebuke in all that you put your hand to, sickness will come to you and your house, your bloodline will be cut off.”

[…]

Alveda is dismissive of her aunt, who died in 2006, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … Therefore I know something about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Stanton-King claims that she met King fifteen years ago, when, at the end of her rope, she stumbled into a shelter and King gave her a job. Depending on where you look or what’s convenient, Alveda King is described as the wannabe congresswoman’s “godmother,” her “adopted” mother, or her mentor. Here they are just last week, clinging to Trump like he’s a god.

I’m all for criminal justice reform, and respect both women’s work to that end, but in a news radio interview just a couple weeks before her pardon, Stanton-King went deep into her support for the current occupant of the White House; she asked black listeners to look past Trump’s obsession with the Central Park Five and focus on his anti-choice stance. “Every black baby aborted is a black vote aborted,” she told WAOK host Juandolyn Stokes on Feb. 3, before blaming black media for not promoting her books, insisting black Americans are being played by the press. “We’re being fueled by hate, and not looking at the facts,” she declared. In June 2019, Stanton-King also voiced support for Alveda King’s fight to “not only defund Planned Parenthood but to overturn Roe v. Wade.”  She told the Atlanta Journal Constitution on Friday that “It is time for war” on Democrats’ support of reproductive choice and abortion access.

She’s also wildly homophobic, as this tweet—just one day old as of this writing—makes clear.

Enough is Enough #LGBTQ pic.twitter.com/aVli0Xgc33

— Angela Stanton-King (@theangiestanton) March 6, 2020

She voices these stances even though (or perhaps because) one of her children is gay.

PSA: Calling me transphobic, homophobic or bringing up the fact that I have a grown Gay son will never silence me about the sexual perversion of #LGBTQ ?? or the blatant pedophilia that’s taking place before our eyes.

— Angela Stanton-King (@theangiestanton) March 4, 2020

BET, home to Stanton-King’s former reality show, pulled no punches with the headline “Black Trump Supporter Has The Audacity To Run For Congress Against Rep. John Lewis,” and questioned her sincerity: “It remains to be seen how genuine Angela Stanton-King’s motives are but her fate might be similar to Stacey Dash’s failed run for a congressional seat in a predominantly Black area in 2018,” the no-byline story notes.

Over on Twitter, one user predicted whose goals Stanton-King would serve.

Bloody Sunday inspired Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act.

Outrageously, this historic civil rights law has been gutted by the Supreme Court.

But this will not stand. Those who risked their lives in Selma showed when people stand together for justice, nothing is impossible. https://t.co/b5taJowZmN

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 7, 2020

This would-be constituent was not swayed in her support of Rep. Lewis.

I live in the 5th District! I am all for restorative justice just wished the efforts went to innocent people wrongly convicted. I’ll be voting for Congressman Lewis! Foolishness!

After getting Trump pardon, Angela Stanton-King sets sights on Lewis https://t.co/c2MsC5kLUc

— T. Renée Crutcher (@sankofasongbird) March 7, 2020

Another user pointed out the level of arrogance required to challenge this particular incumbent.

The GIF responses are plentiful …

… but this GIF says it all.

BREAKING: Angela Stanton-King to run for Congress against Rep. John Lewis per Angela Stanton-King’s P.R. team. pic.twitter.com/gwAEOEho20

— CBS46 (@cbs46) March 6, 2020

Rep. Lewis, 80, is one of less affluent members of Congress; he announced he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in late December.

This American badass was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.

==

==

https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/jerry-springer-trump-took-my-show-and-brought-it-to-the-white-house/

==

https://www.academia.edu/4391470/Reality_TV_The_Work_of_Being_Watched_Critical_Media_Studies

2004 mark a

Reality TV The Work of Being Watched Critical Media Studies

p 195-

:{:{}:

}:

:{:{Chapter Eight}:

Survivor

and Uncanny Capitalism

Survivor

is the most successful of the shows considered in this book and has be-come, perhaps, the "classic" format of the current generation of reality TV. Likeseveral of the formats that emerged to capitalize on the new trend,

Survivor

was in

part a game show and in part a reality TV spectacle that chronicled

the

exploitsof sixteen people competing for

$1

million as they lived a "back-to-basics'' lifeon a tropical island in the South Pacific. The series, loosely based on a Swedishformat called

Expedition: Robinson,

struck ratings gold during its first season, av-eraging over twenty million viewers per show and drawing more than fifty-twomillion viewers (almost half of the viewing public for the evening) for its finale,making it "the most watched summer broadcast since Nielsen started using elec-tronic 'people meters' to collect TV ratings in

1987.'"

The show's phenomenal success suggests its ability to navigate the inherenttension

in

reality programming between making an appeal to the "reality" of thespectacle and staging this spectacle

so

that it fulfills the expectations audienceshave for prime-time drama: fast-paced action and complicated plot lines that pro-vide both suspense and resolution during a one-hour time slot. Unlike

BigBrother,

which was roundly critiqued for being dull and poorly produced,

Sur-vivor

offered the best of both worlds: "real" people and events that were neatlyedited into one-hour segments, each of which ended with one of the contestantsbeing voted off the island. One of the reasons for its success was thus the fact thatunlike

Big Brother; Survivor

did not take place in real time-it was filmed in ad-vance, providing ample time for sleek editing that complemented its relativelyhigh production values.

Survivor

also helped inaugurate the trend of reality shows that offer the prom-ise of a return to a natural and implicitly more traditional (even, at times, tribal)environment. This was picked up on by shows ranging from

Temptation Island

to

Celebrity Mole Hawaii.

As

noted earlier, one of the recumng themes of realityTV is the attempt to underwrite the authenticity of the interactions on the show

195

196

Chapter Eight

by contriving a scenario that ostensibly fosters a return to a pre-mass

(or

perhapsa possible post-mass) environment. It is thus tempting to view a competition-based show like

Survivor

as an attempt to naturalize the (Darwinian) logic of con-temporary economic competition by transporting it to an archetypal extrasocietallocation. Such a reading invokes the standard model of ideology critique whichuncovers the way in which human social relations are misrecognized and therebyportrayed as an inevitable consequence of unchangeable natural law. However, as the arguments in previous chapters have suggested, this version of ideology cri-tique remains inadequate to a social context characterized by increasingly savvyviewers who derive pleasure in large part from debunking the ruse of naturaliza-tion.Picking up where the previous chapter left off, the goal of my consideration of

Survivor

is to explore the role of self-reflexive naturalization rehearsed by theshow and to differentiate its version of fetishization from the standard version offalse consciousness associated with ideology critique. In

so

doing, I propose ananalysis of the "uncanny" character of contemporary capitalism foreshadowed inthe discussion of

Temptation Island

the ability of the market to retain its au-tonomous force

even after it has been revealed as

a

social construction.

At stakeis the question of the role of ideology in the era of what Ulrich Beck has dubbed"the risk society."* Classical notions of ideology critique break down in the re-flexive era of the risk society, in which the critical character of demystifying ra-tionality turns back upon itself-in which ideology critique becomes generalized.As we shall see, the question of ideology in an era of savvy reflexivity is closelyrelated to reality

TV's

offer to expose the artifice behind the reality and presentthis revelation as the final frontier of the real. Such all-encompassing reflexivityundermines the modernist distinctions between nature and culture, facts and val-ues, and, of course, reality and artifice-one more set of differentiations that faceerosion in an increasingly dedifferentiated era.

}:

==

only a metaphor?

Cain and Stephen Moore, Donald Trump’s favorites to be new Federal Reserve governors, are doing their combined damnedest to make a farce out of the whole concept of presidential nominations. All the while, Mitch McConnell is standing by and letting it happen. Cain is using his sponsored email list as a “haven for scammy emails” and writing crazy political Facebook screeds and Moore is going on Sean Hannity’s radio show and speculating with Trump’s favorite that the Fed was “helping President Obama politically” and then tanking the economy to hurt Trump.

Normal nominees of normal presidents don’t do this. As Tim Duy, a University of Oregon economist, says “There’s never been a reality-show Fed nominee, and that’s what we’ve got now. […] [normally], once you’ve been nominated, or you’re about to be nominated, you go radio silent—and you go radio silent for a reason. You don’t want to say things that jeopardize your chance of moving forward.” But with McConnell at the helm, they don’t really have to worry about their chances of moving forward. He’s not going to stand in anyone’s way.

At Tuesday’s caucus luncheon, the topic of the nominations reportedly came up, “several” Republicans “questioning the wisdom of floating Mr. Cain and Mr. Moore without consulting the Senate first and before both could be vetted,” according to a participant who talked to the Times. That person also reported that McConnell told the senators that if they had a problem with that, they should take it up with Trump.

“We’ve got to look at whoever the president sends up,” McConnell told reporters Tuesday. “It’s his choice to decide, and once he makes the nomination we’ll take a look at it.” Advice and consent? That’s so 18th century. It’s out the window, along with checks and balances. While the occupier of the Oval Office is a Republican, at any rate.

 ===

From his position as chair of the Judiciary Committee, Graham has the ability to deliver some real red meat to the president and his followers. Last week Igor Derysh reported for Salon on Graham’s plans to investigate Hillary Clinton, something I’ve been predicting for more than a year. All you have to do is watch Fox News for any 10-minute interval and you’ll see that their Clinton obsession burns even hotter than it did in 2016. Now Graham is prepared to throw fuel on the fire.

This week in the latest episode of phony handwringing from the newly anointed civil libertarians of the Republican Party, they are all bellowing about how the FBI treated the self-aggrandizing dirty trickster Roger Stone — which was the same way it would treat any other accused criminal.  Fox News’ Tucker Carlson said the FBI had staged “what was, in effect, a military assault on Roger Stone.” Andrew Napolitano lamented, “This is jackboots in America, and there is no place for that in American life!”

Here’s onetime Phoenix sheriff Joe Arpaio, rending his garments over the inhumanity of it all, and being schooled by journalist Radley Balko, an expert on militarized law enforcement excesses:

Radley Balko

?

@radleybalko

Arpaio once sent 40 SWAT cops, a bomb robot, K9 units, and Steven Seagal to arrest a man suspected of cockfighting. Seagal drove an APC into the man's living room. They destroyed the guy's house with explosives, then filmed it all for a reality TV show.https://twitter.com/RealSheriffJoe/status/1090314139451285504 …

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

@RealSheriffJoe

Sheriff Joe on FBI's Roger Stone Raid: Ive Been Busting Down Doors for 50 Years &; Ive Never Sent That Many Units to the Baddest Murderer https://www.westernjournal.com/sheriff-joe-fbis-roger-stone-raid-busting-doors-50-years-never-sent-many-units-baddest-murderer/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=PostTopSharingButtons&utm_campaign=websitesharingbuttons …

33.5K

2:03 PM - Jan 29, 2019

Twitter Ads info and privacy

13.2K people are talking about this

Yes, the people who gleefully shout “Lock her up!” are suddenly very concerned about due process.

==

---

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/watching-reality-luxury-tv-killing-americas-economic-drive-and-maybe-its-soul

no lnx

NEWS & POLITICS

Watching Reality Luxury TV is Killing America's Economic Drive — And Maybe Its Soul

There is a psycho-social link between regularly watching reality-based shows and being in favor of draconian cuts to social welfare benefits.

By Bob Hennelly / Salon August 6, 2018, 10:36 AM GMT

In both Britain and the United States conservative lawmakers are trying to radically reduce the social safety net for the poor by adding conditions and requirements to programs like Food Stamps and Medicaid. Proposals include adding work requirements and drug testing.

Their voting base is loving it: "Finally, something is getting done. . . ."

A lot has been written about how the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump reflected the ascendancy of anti-immigrant sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic. Both votes, coming in the first quarter of the 21st century, illustrate that there is a psychology of scarcity that has made deep inroads into our political bloodstream.

Of course there’s a surreal irony here when we see Apple reach the trillion dollar mark in value and the personal wealth of the planet’s top .01 percent on an ever upward trajectory to "infinity and beyond."

Abundance is not the problem. Sharing it is.

For down here on earth, the squeeze play is really on social welfare budgets because it simultaneously pulls out the welcome mat for that alien other while also taking a whack at the native born poor who have been "mollycoddled long enough." In this world view the poor are to be viewed with suspicion, like the criminals they likely are.

And like the YouTube video that went viral of the white New York City lawyer berating Latino workers in a Manhattan eatery by threatening to call ICE on them, this emerging xenophobic zeitgeist has a kind of passionate self-righteousness edge to it.

That kind of Trumpian self-indulging tirade is rooted in the conviction that the subject of your derision is actually not a human being at all, but an object worthy of your total contempt. It is the kind of discourse we hear on talk radio when people are described as “vermin” — wild mammals and birds that are harmful to crops and carry disease.

As any person with any background in agriculture  knows, there’s only one thing to do with vermin, call the exterminator.

It would appear from the current tenor of political discourse that the biblical instructions to raise up the poor and the immigrant stranger might as well be prehistoric cave drawings.

There’s just no place in our Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous reality TV world  for Matthew’s instruction (19:21): “Jesus said to him, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell what  you have  and give  to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, and come follow me.'”

We know that for decades now in both countries church attendance has been on the decline. And just what has risen up in its place? Based on ratings for reality television, it would appear to be our actual worship of wealth itself.

Add in our lust for wealth and high-end luxury goods stroked by the corporate media and  voila — we have Donald Trump sitting in the White House atop the Golden Calf (That’s the idol the Israelites built to kill time waiting for Mosses to return from Mt. Sinai).

According to a recently released study from the London School of Economics there is psycho-social link between regularly watching reality based shows like the “The Apprentice” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” and being in favor of draconian cuts to social welfare benefit.

Dr. Rodolfo Leyva, with LSE’s Department of Media and Communications "studied the responses of 487 British adults aged 18-49 to a randomized-control web-survey experiment that was masked as a memory and attention test,” according to an LSE press release. “The treatment group was exposed to 4 adverts for luxury products, 4 tabloid photos of famous celebrities showing off expensive goods, and 4 newspaper headlines of rags to riches stories.”

LSE continued, “The control group was exposed to neutral stimuli such as adverts about the London underground, images of natural scenery and newspaper headlines about dinosaurs. In total, each group was intermittently shown 12 separate images — each for 5 seconds.”

The results showed that even just  an “intermittent minute of attention to common and typical materialistic media messages caused a significant increase in anti-welfare sentiments” with results showing  that “those who also regularly watched shows such as “The Apprentice” and “X-Factor”  were much more likely to hold “stronger materialistic and anti-welfare attitudes than lighter consumers of these shows.”

Dr. Leyva studies political participation, media psychology, neuroscience as well as quantitative and experimental methods in media and communications research.

“”The Apprentice”, “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” and “X-Factor” are replete with MMMs [materialists media messages] that are engineered to absorb audiences into the glamorous world of wealth and celebrities and thus have a strong potential to function as cultivators of materialistic values and attitudes,” wrote Dr. Leyva.

"Humans are inherently materialistic but also very social and communal. The way this is expressed depends on our culture. If there is more emphasis on materialism as a way to be happy, this makes us more inclined to be selfish and anti-social, and therefore unsympathetic to people less fortunate.

He continued, “This study can contribute to explanations for why the UK public’s support for welfare to aid the impoverished and unemployed has been decreasing during a time of rapidly growing wealth disparities, living costs, and rates of precarious [employment] and underemployment.”

As we look to 2018 and beyond, our real problem is not so much Donald Trump, but the part of our national character he personifies, that believes prosperity is achieved through greed and selfishness.

Bob Hennelly is an award-winning investigative journalist and a contributor to Salon

==

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/trumps-disgraceful-behavior-during-comey-scandal-technique-he-learned-reality-tv

==

Jon Perdue, a self-described guerrilla warfare expert and fellow at a little-known security think tank, wrote a book called “The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism.” He is also a onetime contributor to Breitbart.

Perdue was hired as a special assistant at the Treasury Department. The agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.Perdue was featured on CNBC’s reality series “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor” for his invention, the Packbow, which Perdue came up with while studying “collapsed societies, and what people who lived in those societies came up with to either defend themselves or to survive.” It’s a bow and arrow that doubles as a compass, tent pole, walking stick, spearfishing rig, and water purification tablet receptacle.

===

==

A second insider said he was offered a government post, including an ambassadorship, if he could wrangle a top artist. The insider, a talent manager, said he knew at least two other people who have been offered similar deals, but who did not wish to speak to the news media.

Asked how the subject of a possible ambassadorship came up, the second recruiter said he was offered “access to the administration.”

“They said they were in the process of  ‘figuring out posts, ambassadorships and commissions’ if that was of any interest,” the manager said.

The manager said he declined the offer and did not ask which ambassadorships were on the table.

Both men who spoke to TheWrap about the ambassadorships asked not to be identified, and both, like most in left-leaning Hollywood, supported Hillary Clinton in the election.

TheWrap spoke previously to industry insiders who said the inauguration team has its sights set on top-tier talents like Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, Katy Perry and Aretha Franklin, and were willing to pay steep fees for the performers. Perry sang at the Democratic National Convention in July, and Franklin sang at President Obama’s first inauguration.

Also Read:Mark Burnett Inauguration Pitch to Donald Trump Includes Chopper Ride From NYC

Rewarding big campaign donors, fundraisers and other loyalists with ambassadorships is nothing new. According to the American Foreign Service Association, more than 40 percent of Obama’s ambassador nominees in his second term went to political rather than career diplomats. In recent past administrations the figure was about 30 percent, according to NPR.

But handing out government posts for talent bookers is outside the norm.

One veteran inaugural organizer told TheWrap it is unusual to compensate talent and recruiters for an inauguration performance, which is usually considered a high-profile, high-prestige, patriotic gig. And the Sunlight Foundation, a non-partisan group that advocates for open government and accountability, called the idea “alarming.”

“It’s bad policy to offer ambassadorships to unqualified, inexperienced individuals, no matter who is president,” spokeswoman Jenn Topper said. “The public deserves an opportunity to vet the people who will be at the forefront of our diplomatic relations, and this alleged backroom dealing is alarming.”

Ambassadors are nominated by the president, but must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

==

AN

w did Donald Trump win this year’s presidential election? There’s not one reason or cause, but it seems that some Hollywood executives might be feeling some pangs of regret right now.

A new report from *Vanity Fair* reveals that the Clinton campaign’s efforts to get people in Hollywood to hand over damning outtakes of Donald Trump filmed during his time as the host of The Apprenticewere never successful because nobody thought Trump would actually win the election.

“Two days before the election, one entertainment executive with ties to Clinton contacted someone in the industry who had said he had a copy of a tape depicting Trump that could create problems for the then candidate,” the publication writes. “Would this person be willing to pass him the footage to give to the Clinton campaign? Since the latest poll numbers indicated it was clear Clinton would win the election… this person didn’t want to risk it.”

This wasn’t the only incident where people in Hollywood who had dirt on Trump got cold feet when asked to produce, either.

Vanity Fair’ssources claim that reality TV mogul Mark Burnett was reluctant to leak out damning footage of Trump shot during The Apprentice because he feared it could hinder his ability to get future stars to agree to work on his shows.

“Burnett has been able to persuade countless minor celebrities to come on his shows with the implicit promise that he would never make them look bad,” the report notes.

Earlier this week, comedian Tom Arnold claimed that he had recordings of Trump using racial slurs and calling his own son a “retard,” but has said he didn’t release them in part because he wasn’t sure how much of an impact they would have made.

http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/revealed-how-hollywood-moguls-sat-shocking-apprentice-tapes-and-helped-trump-get

---

see CEC conserv entertain complex

socail darwinism: poor ppl, ppl of color deserve what get b/c lazy or inferior

hyper capitalist competitive; confession cam: not here to make friends but WIN, trump will make us winners b/c of his macho saavy biz negot skills

==

former prosecutor?

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/335319-rep-trey-gowdy-used-to-be-on-a-show-called-forensic-files-heres-his-highlight-reel/

==

TRUMP

==

see Linda McMahon gop sen cand 2x

RAW = WAR = authentic

==

http://www.salon.com/2016/04/24/its_all_just_wrestling_to_donald_trump_everything_the_gop_front_runner_knows_about_politics_he_learned_from_the_wwf/

...

Competition with a (more or less) predetermined outcome. The skill of the wrestlers, and the entertainment value of the “sport,” was, at least for me, no less diminished by that fact.

Professional wrestlers use various means to make themselves bleed during a match. Some will cut themselves with a carefully hidden razor blade. Others will allow a more experienced competitor to hit them hard enough to break the skin above the eye or on the scalp. Of course, a person can be busted open “the hard way” when they accidentally hit the turnbuckle, a pole, the stairs, a table, or some other hard object. In some situations, a wrestler would fill up a condom with his own blood, place it in a bucket of warm water, and then later put it in his mouth. Once the condom was bitten into, it would produce copious amounts of blood from the mouth and nose.

The blood in a professional wrestling match is an integral part of the drama that takes place inside the ring. It excites the audience; the blood can earn a wrestler either sympathy or disdain from the crowd. Ultimately, the blood of a wrestler is almost a ritualistic offering from the competitors to the crowd.

Donald Trump is a political performance artist whose repertoire is inspired by professional wrestling.

He has not (yet) cut his forehead open with a razor to elicit awe, wonder, and sympathy from his followers. But given the violence at his rallies, who knows what the future holds?

...

Trump has been involved with professional wrestling for several decades. He is friends with Vince McMahon, the owner of the World Wrestling Federation. Trump’s hotels and casinos have hosted the annual Wrestlemania event—the Super Bowl of pro wrestling. Trump has even appeared at Wrestlemania, where in a “hair versus hair” match, he shaved the head of Vince McMahon. World Wrestling Entertainment acknowledged Trump’s many years of association by inducting him into their hall of fame in 2013.

And now Trump has taken the lessons he learned from those experiences and deftly applied them to his presidential primary campaign.

Professional wrestling is a type of classic storytelling that revolves around heroes and villains. In the language of professional wrestling, the hero is the “face” and the villain is the “heel.” While the boundaries of these archetypes have changed over time, there are certain norms that have remained relatively constant. The “face” wants the sympathy and respect of the audience. He or she has a code of honor. They also, for the most part, do not cheat to win. The “heel” has no such limitations. The heel will lie, cheat, dissemble, and do anything to win a match. The heel also insults and condescends both to the wrestling audience and his rivals. Ultimately, he only cares about obtaining the object of his personal desire—this could be money, power, sex, glory, fame, the championship, or in some cases, just playing the role of a chaotic spoiler who lives to humiliate and brutalize the “good guys.”

A great heel also plays the victim:he or she was not really “pinned” in the ring; there is a conspiracy; “winning” was never the point anyway as there is a greater goal to be achieved.

There are different versions of the “heel” persona. Vince McMahon plays the cruel and manipulative corporate CEO and robber baron who cares about nothing but maintaining and expanding his power. During the 1980s and 1990s, the (then) World Wrestling Federation’s “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase would humiliate the fans, mocking them as poor and working-class “slobs.” Nick Bockwinkel and Ric Flair were playboy millionaire villains who dressed better than their rivals, had more money and success than anyone else, and the charisma and confidence to get anything they wanted out of life. In today’s World Wrestling Entertainment, Kevin Owens is a heel who plays the role of a schoolyard bully.

Trump borrows from all those “heel” personas. He insults women by calling them “ugly” and implying that their menstrual cycles make them irrational. Trump has questioned the masculinity and character of his Republican rivals. Marco Rubio is “Little Rubio.” Ted Cruz is “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump boasts about the size of his penis and the beauty of his wife Melania. In true “heel” form, Trump is “great” and “amazing.” His rivals are not “real men.” They are “low energy” “losers.”

He also wins over the support of his fans by decrying “political correctness” and urging them to beat up and otherwise abuse anyone who disagrees with his agenda. Trump is also a professional victim, who claims that both he and his supporters are being treated “unfairly” by the news media, protesters, the Republican Party, and any other group that has earned his ire.

Trump’s speech and cadence borrow from professional wrestling. And as Jim Ross, one of the most respected and accomplished announcers in the history of professional wrestling recently observed, Trump’s stage presence is heavily influenced by his affiliation with the sport:

The manner in which The Donald works—works up?—his audiences while stumping is vintage WWE. Watch the mannerisms. Walk to the mic, and the crowd quiets. Walk away, and the decibel level rises. Step back to the podium, step away, all the while pumping up a throng that is ready to hang on every word and thought. Everything plays out the way it would if the event were happening from a wrestling ring on Monday Night Raw. And with good reason: Trump was enmeshed on WWE TV in one of the most successful storylines in company history.

Trump also uses emotional appeals communicated in extemporaneous speeches that are delivered at a fourth-grade level, which are designed to manipulate the most base passions of his public. For example, Trump uses slogans and tag lines about America’s “greatness” and how “big” and “wonderful” his ideas are. As a heel, Trump is also duplicitous and contradictory: he makes claims and promises that he then denies or evades when they are no longer of use.

Trump is a perfect presidential candidate for our “post truth” era. During the 1960 presidential election, Richard Nixon was defeated by John F. Kennedy because, in part, he had not mastered the optics of television. But Trump is a reality TV show character turned GOP frontrunner. He is winning because his outlandish behavior has given him billions of dollars in free publicity from a corporate news media that is desperate for ratings. Moreover, Trump’s professional wrestling persona allows him to effectively communicate with his aggrieved, angry, racist, and alienated white “working class” and low-information public in a way that establishment Republican candidates cannot.Trump literally and figuratively speaks the language of the Republican base and is a hero (while simultaneously being a villain for the rest of the American public) who they can live through by proxy.

==-

---

AHA crossover; it's rw radio?

jesse ventura truTV show is faux 60 min

survivor etc darwinian

...

Survivor is not as exceptional as Burnett repeatedly suggests. The show follows a persistent trend in popular culture that thrives on producing ways and knowledges for consumers to use, understand, and derive pleasure from products. A glance at popular culture reveals TV, movie, music, and sports media overbrimming with celebrities explaining what it's like and what it means to do what they do. Also common in these discussions are statements about a specific product's cultural relevance, or "lessons" to be learned from consuming it. Toward a similar end, Burnett cites Survivor's unique ability to illuminate the "core essence of humanity" (Field Guide 144) and to teach culturally relevant lessons about living and succeeding in a corporate capitalist society. I contend that there are serious implications when Mark Burnett, a producer granted a slice of cultural authority, recommends in interviews and in his profitable Official Companion books that his corporately-sponsored show aired on a corporately-owned network be viewed through an ideologically-interested lens. Besides purveying an uncritical perspective he calls "social Darwinism," Burnett boasts that the show reveals real selves and reproduces the real world; this too begs interrogation, as the show is broadcast over a cultural medium that commercializes and commodifies virtually any world it images....

Surviving Survivor: Reading Mark Burnett's Field Guide and De-Naturalizing Social Darwinism as Entertainment

ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLEBy Murray, Keat

Journal of American & Comparative Cultures , Vol. 24, No. 3/4