Authentic Trump

Abstract

Donald Trump, known as a mogul and reality TV celebrity, is presented as horrific in the press now that he wants to be President of the United States, a position requiring controlled and civil behavior, which he cannot master. Comparisons between his candidacy for president and a reality TV show abound, forcing us to contend with the conventions, privileged behaviors and ethics of the current culture of surveillance (which includes reality TV), arising in contexts of surveillance but now exceeding these. The crossover from reality TV celebrity to presidential candidate is troubled, highlighting the uncomfortable intersection of Trump’s whiteness and wealth with his crass behavior. The reality TV genre is seen as trashy, featuring people without class in behavior and often in social and financial status. The presidency, however, is for the elite white upper-middle or upper-class (usually male)—Obama negotiates the politics of respectability to fit this ideal. Popular articulations of Trump demonstrate the uneasy alignment of elite whiteness with white behavior marked as working class or poor, displaying panic about a president unable to exhibit appropriately classed behavior. This dangerously elides the larger machinery that is the government and big business, belying our cultural preoccupation with individualism and obfuscating the systemic. Taking Trump for the system negates how the current machinery has in fact produced a string of Trumps (Palin, Bachmann, Cruz), leaving us longing for the more civil days when white elite men knew how to speak their hatred in a civil manner.