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Public Humiliation as Spectacle – The Punch and Judy Shows [1]

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Date: 2025-01-06

Two of the highest paid and most successful TV actors are Judge Judy and the former President. It is no coincidence that both are abusive personalities who entertain their devoted audiences by bullying weak and vulnerable people. They are the Reality TV stars in long-running entertainment dramas as they express disrespect and criticism towards their mostly powerless victims.

Judge Judy plays the avenging angel dispensing justice. But the objects of her abuse are in a vulnerable position since she can rule against them if they were to demand respect or criticize her abusive screaming and snap judgements (judgments for which she often has little or no evidence).

In The Apprentice, the former President has the perfect situation for an abuser as he plays a savvy, successful businessman meeting out criticism and insults to aspiring entrepreneurs who are in no position to disagree or fight back. Publicly firing underlings in front of an enormous audience is the ultimate rejection in the business world. These young people have no choice but to accept this dramatic act of public shaming. The former President’s statement “You’re fired!” is the climax of the Reality TV drama that viewers repeatedly return to see and savor. It is a public spectacle of humiliation.

As with most Reality TV, the show’s producers and writers can carefully script the shows and control their contents through editing to make sure these Reality TV stars are always right, always dominate others, and are always in control. They come to represent an image of ideal power that their adoring audience desires but will likely seldom possess in their own lives. But their unmatched authority is a made-for-TV illusion.

The “Tr*mp and Judy Shows” are dramas of abuse and insult. They demonstrate expressions of dominance that can be spellbinding to people who feel themselves to be weaker and less powerful than others. Audiences cannot get enough of these highly scripted sessions of criticism and rejection all under the respectable cover of seeking business success and court justice.

Unfortunately for our democracy, watching these entertainment shows grooms people to respect, support, and enjoy watching authoritarian personalities like the former President and Judge Judy dominate others.

The advertisers and media companies are happy to take the emotions normally associated with championship wrestling and heavy weight boxing and repackage them for a more sophisticated audience - one hungry to watch publicly administered emotional abuse but with less graphic violence.

While traditional Punch and Judy puppet shows have direct violence as Punch beats his wife (domestic violence) and various other characters with a big stick to the delight of audiences, these Reality TV shows rely on more indirect forms of violence using abusive interactions in the context fake business meetings and mock courtrooms.

But the former President has a special advantage for himself by absolving his guilt for such normally unacceptable behavior. He found a way to defend himself by alternating between the roles of abuser and victim. Judge Judy does not need to defend her crass behavior because there is no press or public forum to criticize her. But the former President is continually criticized publicly for his abusive and insulting behavior in news conferences and in print. He must have a way to neutralize such criticism.

The former President must find a way to excuse his obnoxious behavior for his admiring audience to justify their support and get them to offer up excuses for him. Supporting an obnoxious bully requires people to launder their motivations so that that they can continue to maintain an aura of self-respect and retain their claims of being “good people.”

So, this abuser, the President, and highly privileged inheritor of around 500 million dollars in the late 1970’s (which would by one estimate worth between 4 or 6 billion today) must be cast ironically as a “poor” victim.

The President’s supporter’s refrain is, “They never gave him a chance” or they have “Tru*mp derangement syndrome.” They say, “He is really good (like me) but he is misunderstood”. The President claims that he and his supporters are all victims and are oppressed by the deep state, and supporters nod their heads in agreement. He says they stole the election from me, and they are certain he is right. He says, “It’s so unfair” and they fully understand and identify with his phony claims to misery. He says, “Why do they criticize me?” after being one of the most obnoxious and lying public figures in the history of US politics. He is the archetype of “poor me”. His claimed victimhood gives him moral cover to justify continuously attacking and lashing out at others.

So, the cycle of media and political success is complete – victimize others and then claim that you are in fact the poor, powerless, innocent victim.

He is the most privileged, unlikely victim on planet earth. However, his supporters seem absolutely convinced of both his virtue and his victim status.

So, what does this say about many of his followers? To identify so strongly with this malignant, caustic personality indicates that many have a deep well of resentment, frustration, and anger at the world. Many are thrilled to watch people like the former President or Judge Judy express their simulated righteous anger at largely helpless people who cannot disagree or respond.

They have been cooped and corrupted by the entertainment industry and right-wing media which offers multiple excuses and justifications for the President’s hateful behavior and perhaps by extension their own. Many are addicted to following someone that releases and expresses their inner demons and does not have to apologize, someone who is not “woke”.

One might conclude that our society is deeply disturbed and emotionally fragile. It offers up the ideals of wealth and success but creates relatively few places where these rewards can be found. This leads to much frustration, envy, depression, religious and political extremism, addiction, suicide, and other tragic consequences.

Groups of supporters can alternate between a manic phase (the President is great, MAGA is great) and a depressive phase (The President is a victim, we are victims) during the mental illness of Manic Depression. The President switches between these roles seamlessly and in the blink of an eye. His supporters know the drill and follow right along. They are conditioned to participate in this addictive cycle of abuse and victimhood, grandiosity and depression.

The question is whether democracy can survive a moderate form of mass psychosis brought on by these spectacles of abuse in the entertainment industry, mainstream news sources (i.e., the President’s abusive press conferences), and right-wing media opinion shows.

The fact that there are many Senators and a large group in the House of Representatives that still claim that the election was fraudulent after the Capitol was attacked seems to indicate that they are incapable of learning anything about the dangerous, desperate, and mentally unstable nature of their right-wing supporters. Thus, the nation and its democracy remain in peril.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/6/2295401/-Public-Humiliation-as-Spectacle-The-Punch-and-Judy-Shows?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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