Back When All This Was Just a Joke

The tacky spectacle that US politics has turned into was foretold in scary detail

Any resemblance to real life, etc.

From 1996 to 2000, Brooke Shields starred in the NBC sitcom Suddenly Susan, where she played the lead role as a journalist in San Francisco learning to be a modern independent woman (or whatever that meant in the '90s). During the third season, on May 3rd and May 10th, 1999, the show aired the two-parter “In This Corner... Susan Keane!” You can watch it here, courtesy of the Internet Archive. The plot of these two episodes is about Susan deciding to run for some minor position in the city government because her preferred candidate has unexpectedly died and the alternative is a barely fictionalized version of Hulk Hogan, renamed here as “Hollywood Hogan,” whose entire campaign platform consists of promising rapid and forceful contact between his foot and any problem's rear end.

The political party with which Susan becomes aligned is presented as principled, uncorrupted, knowledgeable, pragmatical, and massively unpopular among potential voters. Her opponent, whose platform's only substance is to be found in the form of pectorals and biceps, delivers his message with loud catchphrases, laser lights, dramatic entrances, and not very well disguised threats of violence. While Susan runs out of donors because she's perceived as boring, and ends up having to beg for a financial lifeline from a weirdo who lives in his parents' basement and dresses up as a Star Trek character, Hogan effortlessly crushes the opinion polls. She briefly considers copying his methods by recording a TV ad where she wrestles a mannequin version of Hogan, but in the end thinks better of it and instead shows an ad where she calmly states her positions and trusts that the citizens will vote rationally. When the time comes for a debate, she diligently does her homework and shows up prepared for every topic, whereas Hogan brings his own announcer, makes mocking gestures at Susan, and closes by ripping off his shirt.

As election day approaches, Susan's prospects look worse and worse. Her party's media strategist quits, and one of her coworkers develops an erotic fixation on Hogan. It goes without saying that he wins the election resoundingly.

You can probably guess why I was reminded of this story. Life has become a farcical imitation of fiction, and it didn't start with the Tangerine Tyrant currently occupying the White House: such colorful characters as (takes in big breath) Michelle Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Rudolph Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, Laura Ingraham, Dinesh D'Souza, Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck, John Bolton, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lauren Boebert, Betsy DeVos, Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Kristi Noem, Tom Cotton, Ron DeSantis, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Bobby Jindal, Brett Kavanaugh, Steve Bannon, Mike Huckabee, Mike Lindell, Ben Carson, Candace Owens, Rick Santorum, Stephen Miller, Joe Rogan, J. D. Vance, Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, George Santos, Steve Mnuchin, Mike Lee, Vivek Ramaswamy, Greg Locke, Rick Perry, Jill Stein, Roy Moore, Sean Hannity, Clarence Thomas, Steve Turley, Richard Lowry, Herman Cain, Josh Hawley, Jack Posobiec, Matthew Heimbach, Nick Fuentes, Roger Stone, Matt Gaetz, Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Matt Taibbi, Larry Pratt, Mark Sanford, John Hawkins, Paul Manafort, Erick Erickson, Dave Rubin, Karl Rove, Alex Jones, Gavin McInnes, Jackson Hinkle, Scott Walker, Dennis Prager, Chris Christie, Marco Rubio, Marianne Williamson, Scott Pruitt, Jeff Sessions, Pete Hegseth, Sebastian Gorka, Dennis Kucinich, etc., who in a functional country would never have reached the amount of power and reach they have, are the symptom of a decades-long degradation of US political culture that, depending on your generation, dates from the era when Dubya left office without paying for his crimes, or when Reagan left office without paying for his crimes, or when Nixon left office without paying for his crimes. Whoever you point at as the biggest culprit, the result is the comedy/horror show we're living through. It has become normal in the US to give the highest positions of power to ignorant clowns.

I feel retroactive dread when I watch these episodes of Suddenly Susan and recognize, in an outlandish exaggeration that was intended as too obviously ridiculous to be true, the very same moves that helped the Tangerine Tyrant rot the brains of half the country. Joke candidates have existed everywhere (oh boy do we know about it), but the unholy marriage between public debate and show business is a uniquely American invention. Hollywood Hogan seems to have received instructions from the future: his repertoire of tactics contains crass humor, disdain for nuanced thought, blatant misogyny, appeals to a vaguely defined archetype of masculine vigor, and plain nonsense. This character wasn't too far from the real-life man (ahem), and with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it makes perfect sense that he'd end up lending his fame and influence to the MAGA movement.

The two-parter ends with a bizarre twist, a headscratchable meta-joke that fails to grapple with the full nature of the problem. After Hollywood Hogan wins the election, Susan meets with him to ask about his true intentions in office, and is stunned to see him transformed into a suave, well-mannered gentleman who listens to classical music and displays a solid command of budgetary minutiae. As he explains, the wrestler persona is just a strategy to get the public's attention, but he actually plans to use his new position to do serious work for the city. If we take this meta-joke at face value, the show's position seems to be that even honest politicians will need to stoop to the level of pigs in a mud fight if they want to get any votes. Today it sounds naïve to suggest that behind a vulgar, vicious campaign may hide a thoughtful, well-meaning citizen. And yet, that's what many Trumpists sincerely believe: that the outrageous insults and terrifying moves toward dictatorship are just hyperbole and he doesn't really mean it. The tacit assumption is that all politicians have to lie to get votes, and their preferred liar simply happens to know how to wield lies more effectively. This segment of his followers agrees with the rest of us that what he says is too scary to consider, but they jump to the defense mechanism of believing it's all said in jest. Are they secretly as worried as we are that all this time he's been telling us exactly who he is? If they realized that he does mean everything he says, would they turn against him, or would their brains fry in irresolvable contradiction?

Ah, to go back to those brighter, more innocent days, when jokes about the cheapening of politics could stay confined to a TV screen.

—Arturo

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