When I wrote my last post about the election, I didn’t think
for a moment that Donald Trump would actually secure the incredible lead that
he’s already secured in the Republican primary. He is, by most counts, more than two-hundred delegates ahead
of his nearest rival and a little less than five hundred delegates away from
being the presumptive nominee.
He also defended the size of lil’ Trump tower in a March 3
debate after Marco Rubio, who has since suspended his campaign, commented on
the size of Trump’s hands.
Trump’s response to Rubio’s comment—which also included a plea
for serious policy debate—focused entirely on the threat to his manhood. And of course, with typical
braggadocio, Trump assured concerned Americans saying, “I guarantee there’s no
problem”—and, really, why would he lie about such a thing?
The joke, which Rubio made a few days before the debate, was borrowed from an extended Trump take-down on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (below). John Oliver’s satirical brilliance aside,
what I find interesting about the debate over Donald’s dick is that it
exemplifies an interesting shift in our political culture.
A couple smarter people than me have commented on the
changing face of contemporary politics in America. Jeremy Engels argues that contemporary
politics are marked by a rhetoric of “resentment” that seeks to divide a people
against itself. Susan Herbst similarly draws attention to the rise
of incivility in public discourse as a strategy for forming and moving publics.[1]
Resentment and incivility, though clearly present in our political discourse,
just don’t explain dick jokes.
Although commonplace in late night programming, phallic
humor usually doesn’t hold sway during official campaign events. Rubio’s jab and Trump’s defense during
the debate, however, took center stage as twitter exploded in response. CNN even ran the following headline:
“Donald Trump defends the size of his penis.”
The next day, Rubio was questioned about the joke on the Today Show (below). And, like Trump, he defended his comments. Was not ashamed for having “gone there”
in his attempt to get back at a “rhetorical bully.” He also admitted that he would even vote for Trump in the
general election if he was the nominee—small hands notwithstanding.
The whole exchange, I think, points to a shift in political
culture in terms of how we understand shame. For Aristotle, shame was an emotion, a feeling and,
therefore, among the available emotional appeals (pathos) in a speaker’s repertoire.[2] To appeal to shame, for Aristotle, is an
imagined loss of reputation or disgrace in the eyes of those whose opinion we
should value. This appeal, in the
“shame-culture” of Ancient Greece was at once a tremendously powerful
rhetorical weapon and an important component to Athenian democracy.
The exchange between Rubio and Trump and the fall-out on
social and traditional media, demonstrates, I think, that ours is becoming a
politics without shame. Both
Rubio’s joke and Trump’s defense of his nether regions were as shameless as
discourses can be. Both speakers,
and the media that covered the exchange, disregarded the public’s opinion of
the candidates and the campaigns.
When politics devolves into dick jokes, its shamelessness distracts the demos from its inevitable task of the
vote.
When our politics ignores shame our candidates can build
platforms on insults, bigotry, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and fear. When our politics lacks shame, it loses
its humanity. When our politics
fails to respond to shame, it disregards its responsibility to the citizenry. More the point, when our politicians are
beyond shame, they flaunt their utter disregard for the voters they represent.
Arguably, this last point isn’t all that surprising for the
cynical reader (or, frankly, the cynical author). Maybe our politics isn’t newly shameless. Maybe politics is, by nature, immune
to shame. Maybe, but even so our
political rhetoric tends feature at least the veneer of shame. Even where a politician clearly does
not care about his or her constituency, he or she must keep up
appearances. In a post-Trump
political landscape, regard for the voter appears to be becoming less and less
necessary for political success.
Regardless of the public’s perception, Rubio isn’t ashamed
of his jokes at Trump’s expense and Trump isn’t ashamed of his proposed
policies… as long as you think he’s bigger than “Little Marco.”
