Posted on 02/03/2016 8:25:48 AM PST by conservativejoy
Donald Trump was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2013. He'd been involved with professional wrestling for over a quarter century. At first his interest was on the business side, because so many of the events were held at his hotels. But then he began appearing in the ring as an actual character.
His greatest moment came in 2007 with the pay-per-view series called "Battle of the Billionaires," when he verbally went up against the WWE's chief executive, Vince McMahon. The feud started when Trump interrupted McMahon on Fan Appreciation Night and upstaged him by raining thousands of dollars in cash down on the crowd in the arena. It continued with a verbal barrage and proxy match, and ended with a triumphant Trump shaving McMahon's head in the middle of the ring.
From the moment he entered this presidential race, his campaign has been one long exercise in taking the manners of professional wrestling and interjecting them into the "respectable" arena of presidential politics.
This is an anxious and angry nation. Many people have lost faith in its leadership. Somewhere in his marketer's brain Donald Trump intuited that manners are more important than laws and that if you want to assault the established powers you have to assault their manners first.
By shifting the cultural language Trump initiated a new type of culture war, really a manners war. He seemed fresh, authentic and resonant to a lot of people who felt alienated from the way elites govern, talk and behave.
Professional wrestling generates intense interest and drama through relentless confrontation. Everybody knows it's fake at some level, but it is perceived as fake and real at the same time (sort of like politics).
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
While I certainly do not support Donald Trump, anything that David Brooks writes should be taken with a grain of salt.
He does what he wants, that is real.
What an awesome guy. Go Trump!!Thanks for this story. I never knew this. So great.
They can say all they want about Trump but I know he’s not a Ryan, Boner, Ole MConnel, McCampaign etal!
In this case, the parallels between Trump’s association with wrestling and his political career seem to be well documented.
David Brooks is not real.
The media are chomping at the bit.
No kidding. David Brooks not liking Trump is a plus for Trump to me.
But David Brooks is a real...a real Leftist pretending to be “Conservative”
So happy you’re sharing the wisdom of David Brooks on FR!
Yeah, like everything in politics and the news media is real, transparent, and without an underlying agenda.
At least Trump asserts his political stances clearly and boldly without regard to political correctness.
You think they are holding back? This is their best stuff and its pitiful.
he is a lot of real things but they are X rated.
NBC is sitting on a Trump BBC expose that is not very flattering.
Apparently David Brooks is on Team Cruz now. Interesting. Cruz has a nice NY caucus going now with Brooks and his gay boy activist donors.
Nothing about trump has changed. He is still democrat minded, showmanship is his trademark. No thank you.
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