Presidential Politics as Reality Television

A common theme and criticism about presidential politics during this current phase of the election cycle is how the series of primaries and caucuses and debates are similar to reality television. Sometimes this can be an easy dismissive comment since one of the candidates actually has experience with reality programming, but I'd argue it goes far beyond that. I have a small number of guilty pleasure reality shows I'll follow each year, so I've had enough experience with the genre to notice a few things:

*Each candidate has either willingly stepped into or has been assigned a quickly identifiable one-dimensional characterization. These same characterizations can be found in just about any reality TV show. It's late February as I write this, so who do we still have left in the race? The Bully. The Smarmy Liar. The Whiner. The Space Cadet. The Misfit Who Yells All the Time. The Scary One. The Perpetually Ignored. I didn't mention any names here and I honestly don't agree with most of the labels I've included, but I'm pretty sure anyone following the election would be able to match them up with the remaining candidates, based on how the media is presenting the race.

*Each debate plays like a new television episode. People who got along three weeks earlier will be at each other's throats as the "plot" advances. Past arguments are continually referenced, so the viewers who haven't been tuning in from the beginning can catch up, much like a "Last week on The 2016 Debate..." introduction. The debates are followed by a public largely waiting for a fight to start.

*Both are populated by contestants who, for one reason or other, believe they have some quality that demands the attention of a national television viewing audience.

*As the season progresses, people are voted off the island / evicted from the house / told to pack up their playthings / announce they are suspending their campaign. After the story goes on long enough, it becomes hard to remember everyone who was on the show from the very beginning.

*The Internet is full of people arguing about which characters they like and which they don't.

*The people who get attacked the most always claim it as a compliment, saying it shows the other players in the game respect and fear them as a competitor.

*The process serves as a perfect example of how we all wish we could have left our most fundamental personality flaws behind us back in high school when they were so prominently on display, and how easily it can be for those flaws to resurface. We see it happen every time a candidate smiles through a barrage of name-calling.

*When everything is said and done, the winner will probably be the only person out of the pack to remain active in our collective awareness. Meanwhile, the others will fall back on public appearances to supplement their incomes -- presidential candidates will be at political fundraisers and go on speaking tours, while reality TV participants will be posing beside selfie-taking fans at rural casinos during three-hour time windows on weekends.

The big difference is that reality TV is intended to be entertainment, and the people who volunteer for their chance to be a part of it know that when they sign up. Electing a president should demand a higher standard of scrutiny. When people sign up for that, they know the entertainment aspect has, unfortunately, become a means to an end, and if they want a shot at the big prize they have to play the game.

I just know that this summer when I'm following the newest season of Big Brother and trying to decide which houseguests I dislike the most, I'll be concurrently hoping that the eventual presidential nominees will have the chance (or be demanded) to prove why they, flawed human beings though they might be, are the most qualified to lead our country through some tumultuous and contentious times.

And hopefully the public will vote for a leader who has more gravity than just being a favorite character.

In Which I Explain the Whole Candle Thing

I’m starting a new category of posts today, in which I try to explain the origins of some of my more acute examples of nerdery, which, believe me, makes for an extensive list. But that’s fine. In fact, I even see it as a personal strength. In recent years, largely due to the power of social media, terms like “nerd” and “geek” and any derivations of them have been reclaimed by the same people who have had society tag them as such, and then redefined to mean a strong and focused devotion for a particular interest. I see nothing wrong with these things. I think anyone who can claim an enjoyment or interest in something that enhances their happiness, and isn’t hurting anybody along the way, is probably doing better than the people who would look to make fun of them for any over-enthusiasm they might occasionally display. Star Wars geek. Music nerd. Potter Nerd. And so on. But I’m not starting this by writing about any of those. Today it’s all about candles.

We didn’t typically have a lot of candles in our house growing up, but they were still around, usually on top of birthday cakes and all over the place at church. We had a collection that came out with the Christmas decorations, and because they were around every year makes me think how most of them probably didn’t get used much. Some did — I clearly remember some weird, porous thing of a candle that my dad brought home from the drugstore once. It looked like something plucked from an alien landscape, which melted through its own sides and dripped down to decorate the bottle supporting it. I remember spending at least an hour of one childhood evening hypnotized by this, watching it melt and trying to anticipate its narrative.

I came to resent candles a little once I began teaching, since they were such a staple of lazy parent obligation as a Christmas present for the teacher (to say nothing of me being a guy teacher, which was an added level of challenge for many people). Some gift candles were very nice, but I didn't have much use for them outside of the three weeks of the year I had Christmas decorations out. Plus most were pine-scented (Christmas trees?) to a level reminiscent of insect repellent, or they looked like they were made out of stale candy and formed into the shape of something like an awkwardly-balanced reindeer that I had no desire to display in my home.

A good number of years into teaching saw me living in a mediocre townhouse, and sharing a wall with a guy who regularly practiced his bass guitar at 11:00 PM. When I had my fill of this and decided it was time to move, I was introduced to the world of real estate staging. I had my house painted, my carpeting replaced, my kitchen floor redone and one bathroom remodeled to convince people my cave-like interior unit was worth buying. My cousin, who could be described as an amateur, but remarkably insightful, interior designer, told me I should start baking so my house would smell delicious and welcoming when people came to look at it. I told her that simply wasn’t going to happen. We compromised and found some cheap candles at the grocery store that were supposed to, and kind of did, smell like chocolate chip cookies when lit. 

The idea of candles that could smell better than bug spray on pine trees seemed like a great shortcut of a way to make a house feel more domestic. This revelation led to a few exploratory sojourns down the candle aisle at Target, where I figured they had to have a better selection than the grocery store. Not only was the variety much greater, but they even had a few shelves of Yankee Candles there. I found one made of three layers of complementary warm colors of wax, each labeled with a different autumnal bucolic name, appropriate for the season. I removed the lid and smelled it and was thrown back on my heels, both by how perfectly the name matched the scent (of at least the top layer) and how strong it was. I decided to give that one a shot, and never really turned back. 

Years later now, I’m still a loyal Yankee Candle customer (and Twitter follower) and have sunk more money into making my house smell nice than I will ever admit out loud to anyone. I get coupons in both my email and actual mail box, and frequently wind up using them. There’s a Yankee Candle retail location less than a mile from my home, and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out some of the employees recognize me when I walk in. I could tell you just by the name of the candle which season would be the best for it. I own a wick trimmer, because they make all the difference. Giving Yankee Candles as gifts has become habit. I can tell you which locations in my house are the best places to set lit candles so the scent will carry into other rooms. If I have people over, I’ll light a small jar candle for the bathroom, and I’ll make sure the scent is subtle enough to not overpower. There have been days I’ve put my jacket on at the end of the school day and discovered the scent of the candle I’d burned the night before had permeated it so I was still carrying it with me. And all of this is to say nothing of how the only person I can think of with a Yankee Candle devotion deeper than mine would be my agent Carrie, which I feel is yet another example of how well we are paired.

I’m very happy with the house I have now, particularly the way I don’t have to share any common walls with aspiring bass guitar players. I’ll admit that I might not dust every week, and that the outside of most of my windows really should’ve had a good cleaning last summer, and I’ve been known on occasion to fall victim to the “refrigerator full of condiments and nothing else” syndrome, so I’m never going to stand as anybody’s perfect idea of domestic aesthetic bliss.

But, I promise if you ever walk through my front door and are welcomed into my home, it’s going to smell really good in here.

As it does right now.

Lost Christmas

I think it was easier to get excited about Christmas as a kid. Actually, it was probably easier to get excited about almost anything as a kid. We have all lived different lives and have become the people we are due to different experiences, but I think it’s fair to say most of us tend to lose a lot of the hopeful innocence and potential for unabashed enthusiasm that defines so much of childhood as we get older. 

Many of my childhood Christmases were a lot alike. Christmas Eve was almost as much of a holiday on its own, defined by the anticipation. It wasn’t just the presents, or the big meal, or the family-friendly reverence of the Nativity play or the solemnity of Midnight Mass. It was the launch of a multi-day event that always culminated in being surrounded by cousins and aunts and uncles. Our family went to mass on Christmas Eve every year I can remember. We’d attend the early evening service when my sisters and I were still in elementary school. Each year without fail, our dad would be backing the car out of the garage and our mom would have a moment of panic when she realized she had forgotten her gloves, giving her reason to quickly run back inside while the rest of us waited in the car. And each year that happened, it turned out that Santa had come and gone while we were gone; I guess living so far North made our house one of the earlier stops on his route.

Each year our extended family would come together for Christmas at our grandmother’s house in Superior, Wisconsin. Sometimes we’d leave late on Christmas Eve, and sometimes we’d leave late Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve we’d drive through a starry darkness only broken by passing cars or bursts of color from the holiday lights decorating occasional farm houses. The radio was tuned to an AM station with Christmas Eve programming featuring songs, stories, corny jokes, and Santa Claus updates. If it was one of the years we’d wait to leave until late Christmas morning, we usually had glowing sunshine reflecting off the snow, and the inside of the car would get so warm we’d take off our jackets even if it was below zero outside of the car. Arriving at our grandmother's house, whether late at night or in the middle of the day, promised two days of nonstop family, music, food, card games, snow football and shenanigans, all taking place in an ancient house so filled with people that every window was perpetually fogged over for the entire visit. One of the best parts of it for me was running out of energy and getting to sleep in a chilly second-floor bedroom covered with time-worn blankets and pillows, with a streetlight just outside the window.

New traditions evolved as time passed. Midnight Mass became the standard as we grew older, and Christmas Eve at church was more centered around our parents being in the choir, although sometimes my sisters and I would be involved in the music service in different ways as well. There wasn’t much use for drummers during Midnight Mass, so I didn’t have many chances to be involved unless they went full orchestral. Instead I usually had some quiet time to sit in the semi-dark as the church filled up around me, listening to the choir practice and enjoying the peace of the moment.

Before church we had Christmas Eve dinner with our cousin’s family. We exchanged a few presents and enjoyed a quick dash of the holiday innocence we were already outgrowing as we watched the two small boys bounce around the house with excitement. That same tradition took over as we went through high school, and then college, and kept going even as those two little boys went through high school and college and started showing up with their own little boys.

There have been so many different memorable experiences on so many Christmases. None of them were really the same, but a lot of them were similar enough for me to jigsaw together my archetype of Christmas Past, which never really happened during any given year. What I think of as my childhood Christmas is just a collection of scenes assembled and layered by the impermanence of memory.

Speaking for myself at least, Christmas doesn’t resonate the same way anymore. There are too many responsibilities and matters that, as adults, can only be paused for a day or two, if we’re lucky, instead of pushed aside and ignored. We still crave that innocence, that wanting myths and magic to be real, that quality of being so open to possibility. It felt perfectly natural to acknowledge and accept the confluence between the spiritual and the secular, and how that helped us make sense of parallel celebrations with different sets of traditions to honor.

Due to the combination of choices I’ve made and haven’t made in life, here I am in my 40s without a family of my own. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s really not. The only shot I had left at grabbing onto any real Christmas innocence has come and gone as my nephews have grown up. I can still remember looking in on the oldest one so many years ago, as he slept with the protection of a night light in a warm basement bedroom of my parents’ house. I knew when he woke in the morning he’d have half a moment wondering why he was there, then he’d remember it was Christmas morning and the day would come to life for him. That was my last brush with that kind of innocence, at least at that pure level. I don’t believe I’ve seen it since then, and it’s something I truly miss.

So what are we supposed to do as adults, when something as vital to childhood as Christmas spirit becomes arguably less than it used to be for us? Try to make the best of it? That’s kind of a depressing prospect. “Trying to Make the Best of It” implies effort is necessary, and the idea that anyone would have to work hard at making a holiday into something better than what they have is a bit sad. 

Maybe it should just be enough to let the day be its own best version. Instead of missing what it once was or wishing for what it someday might become, it’s probably best to accept, if not appreciate, what it is.