The Trump Establishment

Donald Trump isn’t just turning Washington, D.C., upside down; he’s also leading a revolution against the cultural elites.

- Michael Wolff

IF ALL HIS other cultural blasphemies did not finish off Donald Trump, his grab-them-by-the-pussy line, in the overwhelming opinion of the liberal media, would. That it did not might suggest that many cultural certainties are a lot less firm than most of the media and culture industry thought. Twenty years (or so) of rule-tightening about how we talk about sex, gender, race and our multicultural society was put up for review by Trump’s election.

The ongoing expressions of shock on the part of the cultural establishment reflect its fears that the unapologetic white male has returned. You could hardly find a more threatening and throwback version of that than Trump—a rich, voluble, egomaniacal pussy hound. To write about him, you would need some combination of authors like Norman Mailer, Terry Southern, Harry Crews and Gore Vidal, all notably out of fashion with current cultural norms.

These norms, however, are not speaking to a sizable part of the nation: That same pussy talk that shocked cosmopolitans wasn’t of much concern for many Americans. Media fragmentation has created all sorts of thriving niches that accommodate the views of eager consumers, lessening the need to speak to a broader, more difficult-to-reach audience—the once-great mass market. This same fragmentation is convincing higher-fashion cultural consumers that their concerns are paramount.