According to my old friend, Miss Merriam Webster, the definition of humiliate is “to reduce (someone) to a lower position in one’s own eyes or others’ eyes: to make (someone) ashamed or embarrassed.” She lists disgrace, dishonor and discredit as synonyms, so it is fairly easy to understand why all those “dis” words have seemingly come together to make dis itself a slang word in recent usage meaning “to treat with disrespect.”
Here in America, humiliation is meted out in various ways. The high-profile firing is one. Classic Hollywood had George Cukor being fired as director of Gone with the Wind; Judy Garland was fired from Annie Get Your Gun and Valley of the Dolls. Contemporary media figures like Matt Lauer and, more recently, Tucker Carlson were fired.
Kevin Spacey wasn’t exactly fired from All the Money in the World, more like he was erased from it. After allegations of sexual misconduct were made against him, Spacey’s scenes were reshot with Christopher Plummer, who gave a performance that earned him an Oscar nomination. How humiliating.
But perhaps the most high-stakes arena in which anyone can be humiliated is America’s national politics. Losing an election and getting fired from one’s job at the same time is a double dip of mortification.
Since the beginning of the 20th century, a sitting president seeking to extend his term of office (as you know, they’ve all been men) has won 71% of the time. The advantage of incumbency is obvious. But that other 29% clearly means it’s not a given.
Of the six men fired by American voters during this time, four of them have occurred in the last fifty years, and there are many of us who remember them well. When Gerald Ford lost to Jimmy Carter, I felt kind of sorry for him – although I really liked Betty better than I liked him. Then when Carter lost to Reagan four years later, I was disappointed for him, too. I actually liked Rosalynn better after she admitted in her memoirs that her husband’s lack of bitterness over his electoral defeat was offset by her own feelings expressed at the time. “I’m bitter enough for both of us.” Love that.
George H. W. Bush’s loss in 1992 to Bill Clinton drew up my empathy, and once again it came through my perspective of the First Lady. Barbara was regarded in some quarters as the nation’s grandmother (which really seems a bit sexist and ageist looking back), but I always thought of her as less Memaw and more Lady MacBush, which is far more endearing in my somewhat twisted worldview.
Of all the emotions that Donald Trump can elicit, illicit and otherwise, sympathy is not one of them, at least not from me. It might have been different had Melania been more like Betty or Barbara, or even Rosalynn, but the title of First Lady just didn’t fit her. Neither word seemed to apply. By the way, where the hell is she? I get that she’s not “some little woman standing by [her] man like Tammy Wynette,” but I’m starting to get worried. Well, kind of.
But this week brought a peculiar humiliation to Kevin McCarthy. It’s not just that he got fired as Speaker of the House; that would be bad enough. The worst of it is his blindness to the obvious consequences of the Faustian bargain he made to become Speaker in the first place.
McCarthy’s political rise from his roots in Bakersfield, California, where he was educated at Bakersfield High School and California State University, Bakersfield, to the Speakership is impressive. But well, when you’re from Bakersfield you have to do something.
McCarthy wanted to be Speaker in 2015 and replace John Boehner who resigned from the House and the Speakership in large part because of the unruliness of the Republican caucus. But McCarthy dropped out at the last minute, not having enough votes. When the opportunity came up again earlier this year, he promised anything and gave everything to secure the job. He struck a deal with Mephistopheles, who looked an awful lot like Matt Gaetz, and finally won on the fifteenth ballot. This week, Mephisto—as his friends call him–reached out and collected McCarthy’s soul, taking back the office he briefly held in exchange.
But I don’t want to seem completely unsympathetic to McCarthy. After all, he seems like a nice man, and being Speaker of the House is a really big deal. If only he had studied Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus at Cal State, none of this might have happened, or at least he could have bargained for more than nine months.
Therein lies the value of a liberal arts education.
