Trumpeting

When I used to go gambling in Atlantic City, my favorite place to play was Donald Trump's Taj Majal. This despite the fact that it was cavernous and soulless, understaffed, and hardly any of its restaurants were open midweek leaving us to the mercies of a goddawful buffet. Yet somehow I always had my best times there. The hall was suffused with chutzpah. The gaming chips bore the image of the emperor Trump, like the Roman coinage of old. Even the name of the place, Taj Majal, was unforgivably pretentious, but in a grand, flamboyant way. Too bad "Caesar's Palace" was already taken.

The same can be said, of course, for the Donald himself. It would be easy to condemn him as the King of Conspicuous Consumption and the Fattest of the Fat Cats. But he would take these titles as compliments, for his ego demands superlatives, whether positive or negative. I have mixed feelings about Trump, for I know that I would not especially like him personally, based on his Imperial attitude and snobbishness. Yet I also find him, like his gambling places, shamelessly entertaining.

Shameless is the operative word here. Some famous folks, especially in Hollywood, try desperately to maintain some semblance of privacy, especially when getting married. Trump not only parades his wedding (I'd call it a marriage, but it is certain to eventually collapse) for all the paparazzi in the world, and gives tacky interviews with Entertainment Tonight and its knockoffs. Of course the point of this is to showcase Melania. Ah, Melania, the trophiest of trophy wives. Even her name is majestic. And she really is stunning, almost blindingly so. So the Donald pulls off another superlative, despite the fact that his gambling interests in Atlantic City are in Chapter 11 (or maybe because of the fact). He's such a character.

He brings the same audacity to his reality show "The Apprentice," which is why I find the series so amusing, if ultimately inconsequential. The reality genre, for better or worse, is a major part of the video universe, but has yet to be critically deconstructed. We know farce, comedy, drama and tragedy, but where on that continuum does Reality programming fall? In the case of "The Apprentice," clearly it is comedy. "The Apprentice" is to reality shows what "Desperate Housewives" is to soap opera--practically a self-parody (like the Donald persona).

Mark Burnett must have realized it when helping to develop this effort. He realized that character counts more than anything else in locking in an audience's interest. Trump is like the Lou Grant of this nest of corporate toadies on different levels of their career tracks. He is the smiling curmudgeon, dangling the carrot of wealth but making his candidates dance through hoops almost as humiliating as those negotiated by contestants on the much more loathesome "Fear Factor." And then they bow and scrape to gain his favor. Since nothing seriously bad can happen to the apprentices-in-waiting, we do not agonize with their misery; we only wait for them to backbite each other and embarass themselves and eventually return to their cushy private employs, hopefully with a book deal. Even more ironically, the "winners'" are the least fortunate of all. They are contracted to actually work full-time for this egomaniac, and have to vacate that splendid penthouse like all the losers. Serves 'em right.

It takes several weeks of watching to get a handle on all the characters Burnett/Trump have gathered for their slow torture. Already some lively characters have emerged--Danny, the guitar-strumming geek; Kristen, the overly mascara'ed bitch. There's no way they will make it through to the end, but they will generate many enjoyable conflicts. I'm not surprised two men have already been dismissed; after selecting two male apprentices, I'm sure Trump would like to add another woman to his staff, and is probably getting a lot of shit about that from Caroline. As for Lieutenant Caroline, she has become my favorite "good cop" on the show. She may appear an ice princess but there is something engaging about her, and yesterday, when she thoughtfully saved a freaked-out candidate from quitting, she showed real humanity (though watch out...Trump may fire her if he reflects too much about this.) As for George, he is such a vinegary sort, he'd be perfectly cast as the mean uncle in "Nicholas Nickleby".

In fact, Charles Dickens--the satirist of "Bleak House" and not the humanist of "Oliver Twist,"--would likely have enjoyed this program immensely. That is, if he ever lifted his fingers from his word processor. A modern Dickens would be more like a Steve Bochco or David Kelly, churning out volumes of episodic scripts and thriving as well as the Donald. And I'm sure he would have no trouble digging up a Melania--or a Michelle Pfeiffer--to display to a gaga public.