Friday, July 10, 2020

Hurray for Trump Rallies

POST-GAZETTE - Res Publica
Hurray for Trump Rallies
by David Trumbull -- June 19, 2020

When I was young, my family, like most American families, would gather around the television at least a few nights a week and enjoy entertainment that offered something for everyone. The marvelous variety shows -- Ed Sullivan of course the biggest shoe-- were where Americans were fist introduced to some of the rock bands whose music we still listen to six decades later. They also featured comedy, acrobatics, juggling, you name it. If you could put it on TV, it was there in an hour-long program, with the host as the center around which the entire circus revolved. In other words, they were in the 1960s what a Trump rally is in 2020.

"By the way, is there anything more fun than a Trump rally? Is there? Seriously. And we break every attendance record every single time, just about." -- Donald J. Trump.

The Trump rallies are back! For the Saturday, June 20, 2020, rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the campaign reports they received 800,000 requests for tickets. Fox News is the top cable news network in large part because it shows every Trump rally. Each Trump rally brings Fox about 5 million viewers.

It's the best TV on TV. You get music, lots of fun upbeat music, the sort of music that back in the day of network TV you would have gotten on those variety shows that filled our 23-inch screens. Some of the artists object to their music playing at Trump rallies. But as Mick Jagger found out when he tried to stop it, "You can't always get what you want." If the venue has a license to play your song, there isn't much you can do about it in most cases.

The music at Trump rallies will go on, and the crowd will go wild. There will be clapping, dancing, jumping around. I have never seen people at a political event having so much fun. Sure, at both parties' national conventions the balloons will drop when the nomination becomes official, music will play, and people will cheer, but the whole thing is so choreographed and staged that it will be a bore -- nothing like the energy at a Trump rally.

What is a TV variety show without a clown? At a Trump rally you can be sure to see some clown who waited outside in the heat or cold for many hours to get in and immediately get himself thrown out for an attempted disruption. Apparently, it never occurs to them that one voice in a backrow seat in a 20,000 person arena can't be heard, so no one will even know why you are protesting. Maybe they don't even know themselves why they are protesting. One thing is clear, the Trump supporters know why they are there. For a quarter of a century they saw America being taken away from ordinary Americans, and taken over by a small elite class that thinks the rest of us are deplorable.

Trump wants to give America back to us deplorables. And, in the process, he's giving us the greatest show on TV.