Changing the media’s notions of failure and success

[Commentary] Donald Trump is a moral, intellectual and spiritual failure. Trump’s followers forgive his abusiveness, callousness and mendacity because it embodies, to use Isaiah Berlin’s famous phrase, “the crooked timber of humanity.” His failures of character allow them to forgive him his wealth and power. What his followers cannot forgive is the liberal media’s smug enforcement of the straight and narrow path to happiness and success, a smugness and prescriptiveness often born in conditions of prosperity and privilege that are far removed from the way the majority of Americans exist.

Most American define success in terms of their families, their work—if they’re lucky enough to be working, and at a job with dignity—and their attachment to their communities. For most of the media, success is the right school, the right style of parenting, the right cultural products, the right job, the right etiquette in every social situation, the right social attitudes, and the right workout. That difference between how the media defines success and failure and how much of the rest of the country does, is one of the great causes of the divide between the press and the tens of millions of Americans who have rallied behind the exceptionally flawed Republican standard-bearer. It is a reason most of the media never grasped the rise of Trump’s base of support. Unless it’s addressed, one of the legacies of the 2016 election will be a permanent, and deepening, mistrust of and alienation from the mainstream press.

[Lee Siegel is the author of five books and the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Reviews and Criticism.]