In the four weeks since the shocking election of Donald Trump as president, many in Hollywood and other coastal liberal enclaves have gone through the traditional phases of mourning: denial, anger, bargaining and depression.
Acceptance, the fifth phase, has not arrived.
In the past week or so, I have had conversations with a half dozen leaders in the entertainment industry — producers, executives, managers, writers, directors and others — who continue to walk through their days dazed and struggling to process what has come to pass.
“Every day I wake up and I think for a second that maybe this was all a dream,” one leading executive told me last week. Then reality strikes again, and this person is plunged back into some level of disbelief. I’ve heard similar reactions from more than one other person.
Trump’s decisions during this transition period have reinforced the shock and delayed any path to acceptance. His brazen choice to pick a privatizing billionaire to run public education, a climate change denier to the EPA, a proponent of automating the work force to run the Labor Department and possibly the head of Exxon Mobil to be Secretary of State defies any hope that Trump would govern more moderately than he campaigned.
These developments, cascading through our news feeds day by day, are profoundly destabilizing to those who want to figure out how to approach a presidency they did not expect or want.
This casual lack of responsibility toward the office of the presidency, this penchant for choosing right-wing extremists and military figures for civilian Cabinet posts feels deliberate. It’s as if Trump is aiming to keep people off balance. And that is precisely what is happening.
I ran into the head of a TV network and asked how things were going. Things at the network were going great, he said, but he confessed that he found it hard to be in a good mood about anything with the Trump news inserting itself into his daily life.
Another leading producer told me said she felt powerless and paralyzed. She is busy at work, but she wonders if there’s something she ought to be doing…. but what would that be?
I am not exaggerating when I say that the people I meet feel they have passed through the looking-glass. More times than I can count I hear people say that what is happening in reality would not pass muster in a Hollywood pitch meeting, it’s just too outrageous. Let’s see: The president of the United States is the executive producer of a reality show starring Arnold Schwarzenegger? Rewrite!
All of this points to a tumultuous period to come. When the people who craft the nation’s stories are at a loss, there are bound to be consequences and ripple effects on our culture.
For the moment, we wait, hoping for something to hold onto. But for the moment the cliff-dive that the electorate took with Trump, away from recognizable norms in our government and our politics, leaves us all with vertigo.
16 Ways 2016 Is the Worst Year Since 2001, From Prince to Trump (Photos)
If we told you on Jan. 1 how many awful things were going to happen in 2016, you would have stayed in bed. We know 2001 was the worst year America had in a long time, but here are 16 ways that 2016 has been the worst year since.
On Jan. 10, David Bowie died two days after his 69th birthday. He lived a good life and left us amazing songs. We were very sad, but also pretty confident that the year couldn't get any worse. Wrong.
The Eagles founder Glenn Frey died eight days later at 67, killing our dreams of someday watching the Eagles play "Hotel California" in some pleasant Southwestern amphitheater, a warm wind blowing through our hair. We'd always meant to see them live, and we blew it.
Harper Lee, who wrote our favorite book we were required to read in high school, died at 89 on Feb. 19. That hurt, but at least we still had the book.
The worst is yet to come.
Mar. 6 brought the death of Nancy Reagan at 94. At least she, like Lee, lived a long life. Whatever you thought of her husband's politics, she did good work for Alzheimer's and clearly meant well.
Phife Dawg, one of the founding members of A Tribe Called Quest, which, let's be honest, is your all-time favorite group, died on Mar. 22 at just 45 years of age. Viewed another way, he got less than half as much life as Nancy Reagan.
Garry Shandling died two days later at age 66. If you're a Gen X-er, damn near everyone you liked as a kid is now dead.
But all these horrible deaths couldn't prepare us for the most shocking, earth-shattering demise of all -- Prince. Nothing compares to Prince. He died on Apr. 21 at only 57.
Around this point, it began to feel like our only surviving musical geniuses were Elvis Costello, Paul McCartney and D'Angelo. But at least we were still on track to get the first woman president this year, right? Uhhh...
On June 12 a gunman opened fire in Orlando's Pulse nightclub. The tragedy struck at issues of ethnicity, sexuality and global terrorism, marking the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.
A month later, a sniper in Dallas killed five police officers and wounded seven more. Before he died, he told officers he wanted to kill white people, police said. The shooting followed two cases of African-American men being killed by police in Louisiana and Minnesota.
Oh, we forgot: Britain left the European union in June. That led to lots of economic uncertainty, and was followed by an increase in racist and xenophobic attacks. Also, that British person you married hoping you could someday become an EU citizen? Now you're stuck in Manchester eating fish and chips and swigging room-temperature beer for the rest of your sad gray life.
In October, we learned that one of the two people in the running to lead our country, Donald Trump, once told Billy Bush that he liked to walk up to women and "grab 'em by the p---y." He apologized and said he had changed in the 10 years since, but women kept coming forward saying he had done things ranging from sketchy to criminal, all of which he denied.
Almost exactly a month later, Trump upset Hillary Clinton for the presidency -- after losing the popular vote. Whatever your politics, you can't be super happy about the state of things when the country is so divided that the candidate who came in second ends up in charge of the country.
Oh well. At least no more great musicians died. Ah, hell... Leonard Cohen, who wrote "Hallelujah," that song that always makes you cry at the end of movies, passed on the day after the election. (Again, at least he lived a long life. Hallelujah, we guess.)
Another thing we forgot? Our government is in such gridlock that the Senate still hasn't voted on President Obama's pick to replace poor Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died back in February. So now Trump will get to choose someone, and based on some of his cabinet picks, that person probably won't be great.
It also turns out we all live in a bubble and that all our news is fake.
Hey, at least "Lemonade" was good.
We could really use a pick me up, "Rogue One." Please try to be really excellent, OK?
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Prince died. David Bowie died. And those weren’t even the worst things
If we told you on Jan. 1 how many awful things were going to happen in 2016, you would have stayed in bed. We know 2001 was the worst year America had in a long time, but here are 16 ways that 2016 has been the worst year since.
