To me this election wasn't about political parties. (Trump used to identify himself as a Democrat.) It surely wasn't about God (God doesn't decide elections or football games or exam results for that matter.) It wasn't even so much about policy choices.
This election was about something much deeper and yet superficial at the same time: high school.
I thought high school was over. I thought we'd outgrown the petty remarks about people's appearance and social status or excluding those who are different. But more than once during this election, I've felt like it was high school all over again.
Early on it started to remind me of that film Election, where Reese Witherspoon is the goody-two-shoes who feels she is a shoe-in for class president and has to face off with the school jock. Like Witherspoon's character, Clinton was the hard-working, intellectual type who wasn't necessarily well-liked by her fellow students. She ate, breathed and lived the election.
That's perhaps where the similarities end. The football player in the movie, unlike Trump, could barely make his speech. But people still voted for him to stick it to the girl and have a new face.
The sophomoric humor displayed by Trump in this election, his admittedly "locker room talk" seemed to win certain people over. Like the kids in the playground who laugh when the bully taunts their classmates. If it did create an uneasiness in some of his supporters, they seemed to overlook it in their zeal for a new kid.
Early on he made fun of fellow Republican candidate Cruz's wife's appearance, saying that his (Trump's) women were more beautiful. He called Hillary "nasty." Why not go back to kindergarten and say she's smelly, too and "liar, liar, pants on fire". His attitude toward immigrants, and even Muslims who are already American citizens, certainly did not exude openness.
These are soundbytes, I know. But they echo back to the kind of high school banter and bullying that we all heard on the bus ride back home. In gym class, and yes, the locker room. And it's unbefitting for any presidential candidate.
Hillary is anything but Miss Congeniality, and that was perhaps part of her downfall. She's the nerdy girl that people are tired of seeing raise her hand with the answer all the time. And Trump's the loose-talking guy who makes people laugh. But the presidential election shouldn't be like high school.
The things we might have laughed at in high school and that we still
do in a Judd Apatow film, shouldn't be lauded or excused in a
president-elect. Maybe, like the characters in Apatow's film Knocked Up, Trump will step up to the plate, prove he is more than the class clown who gets the laughs. Maybe.
In the meantime, a lot of us are feeling like high school lessons were never learned.
1 comment:
Yes, it's ridiculous what became acceptable to say publicly.
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