Eat a peach

Here’s the conclusion to the new chapter “The Narcissist’s Reflection,” in the Kafkaesque textual journey known as THE TRIUMPH OF STUPIDITY. (Many thanks to commenter Prufrock for his ingenious suggestion about the potential psychic importance of the Wollman Ice Rink renovation to our hero’s autobiography).

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At this point I wish to introduce the following idea. The ur-text for this entire bizarre narrative – and indeed a key to understanding the even more bizarre circumstance that is Donald Trump becoming president of the United States, twice now and counting – can be found in the southeastern corner of Central Park, at the site of the Wollman Ice Rink.

Forty years ago, in 1986, Donald Trump scored a public relations coup, when he was given credit for renovating the ice rink.  In particular, this project elicited much public praise from the city’s social elite, who, then as now, usually treated Trump as someone who, in the memorable words of Spy magazine co-founder Graydon Carter, was nothing but “a short-fingered vulgarian” from the dreaded outer boroughs.   Characteristically, Trump in fact had almost nothing to do with the renovation itself, other than convincing a construction company to do it for no profit, because the publicity for doing the work would supposedly be so valuable (At the regular press conferences Trump held to trumpet his role in saving the beloved ice rink, he never mentioned the company).

My speculation is that the praise he got from his social superiors for renovating the Wollman Ice Rink was a crucial psychological event for the endlessly needy narcissist, and that something like the Reflecting Pool renovation was yet another attempt to recapture that fleeting high.  This theory becomes yet more intriguing when we consider another event at the rink, sixteen years later.

In 2002, Mark Burnett, the creator of the reality TV mega-hit show “Survivor,” rented Wollman Rink to broadcast the finale of the program’s fourth season.  Burnett had an idea for a new show, which he thought of as “Survivor set in the urban jungle.”  (This recalls Steve Allen’s quip that imitation is the sincerest form of television).  This show would star some charismatic business tycoon, who would make and break the careers of his aspiring apprentices.   Patrick Radden Keefe picks up the story, in his New Yorker magazine profile of Burnett:

Before the segment started, Burnett addressed fifteen hundred spectators who had been corralled for the occasion, and noticed Trump sitting with Melania Knauss, then his girlfriend, in the front row. Burnett prides himself on his ability to “read the room”: to size up the personalities in his audience, suss out what they want, and then give it to them.

“I need to show respect to Mr. Trump,” Burnett recounted, in a 2013 speech in Vancouver. “I said, ‘Welcome, everybody, to Trump Wollman skating rink. The Trump Wollman skating rink is a fine facility, built by Mr. Donald Trump. Thank you, Mr. Trump. Because the Trump Wollman skating rink is the place we are tonight and we love being at the Trump Wollman skating rink, Mr. Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.” As Burnett told the story, he had scarcely got offstage before Trump was shaking his hand, proclaiming, “You’re a genius!”

Cut to: June, 2015. After starring in fourteen seasons of “The Apprentice,” all executive-produced by Burnett, Trump appeared in the gilded atrium of Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue, to announce that he was running for President. Only someone “really rich,” Trump declared, could “take the brand of the United States and make it great again.”

Keefe’s description of the symbiotic relationship between Burnett and Trump is in equal parts hilarious and horrifying, as the Hollywood impresario transforms a thrice-bankrupt thoroughly washed up 1980s pseudo-celebrity into the “great businessman” that the impossibly moronic American electorate would eventually decide was an ideal candidate to run the business of America.

If our current reality was nothing more than a political satire, the climax to this edifying narrative would be an announcement from Trump that he was going to transform the Reflecting Pool into the Donald Trump Memorial Ice Rink, Sponsored by ICE and Bud Light.  As it is, every day is another installment of the Donald Trump Show, in all its continual narcissistic wallowing in a quiescent swamp of national stupidity, before TV voices wake us, and we drown.