“Are you not entertained?”
– Maximus, in “Gladiator”
It helps if you think of it as a show.
Certainly, that’s the way the man in the middle of it does. So just consider last weekend the latest bizarre episode in season four of the Donald Trump presidency. Call it “The One With COVID-19.”
Granted, it’s a favored conservative trope that liberals are the ones held hostage to so-called “Hollywood” values. But there is no one who embodies the worst of the dream factory – of image over substance and overweening self-regard – more than the reality show impresario Trump. He has turned the presidency into a production, stage-managed his office – and now, his COVID-19 diagnosis – with the sole aim of boosting his ego and political prospects.