The "Sanjaya" Presidency

How a Reality Show Phenom Explains Donald Trump

About a week ago, I wrote about how the source of our troubles as a country all began with a show that changed how we fundamentally viewed competition: Survivor. The reality show era began and we’ve been dealing with faux-reality ever since.

Well, last week, one of the many subscribers to PurpleAmerica chimed in through my email with a very interesting insight. I asked him if he wanted the credit for this profound thought (of which he declined) and I told him I would be glad to put this out there for the masses. The hypothesis goes like this:

“Nothing explains Donald Trump winning more than the Sanjaya phenomenon on American Idol.”

Now many of you out there may not know, may not remember, or were born completely AFTER a young Sanjaya Malakar first appeared on American Idol in 2007. Needless to say, the PurpleAmericaFan had a strong case here, one that couldn’t be ignored. So for today’s post, let us stroll down that long road Amnesia Lane and discuss Sanjaya-Mania.

Sanjaya Malakar, American Idol

In 2006, Sanjaya and his sister Shyamali, two Seattle residents both kids of Indian immigrants, tried out for the highest rated show of the 2000s, American Idol. Remarkably, BOTH made it past the initial auditions and group audtions, making them the first brother-sister pair to make it to the Hollywood rounds performing before a live audience.

The popularity of American Idol at the time could not be understated. Kelly Clarkson was now a household name having won in Season 1 and was now running up the charts with “Since You Been Gone,” Jennifer Hudson was still popular and was coming off her Oscar win for “Dreamgirls.” Carrie Underwood had won American Idol two seasons before and was releasing her first album. All in all, there wasn’t much tying together American culture during the late Bush years, what with the Iraq War falling apart and Hurricane Katrina still on peoples’ minds. But American Idol served as the central water cooler topic everyone could watch and have an opinion on without it turning into Thunderdome like today.

Now, to even be on American Idol, you had to be a good singer. Sure, the auditions are hilarious with people who should be nowhere near a stage belting out “She Bangs” and the like, but to get to Hollywood, you need to have talent. Sanjaya had it. He also had a lot of charm and his shyness and uncomfortableness being in front of cameras made him appear all the more human. Young girls also found him as a cute kid in a season where there were few guys performing well. Yes, he had talent, just not as much as you needed to win.

In the first few weeks he was fine, there were others who were much worse than he was. But as the crowd whittled down, he was very OBVIOUSLY the worst singer of those remaining. However, a strange thing then happened. People were specifically voting for him NOT TO LOSE. It seemed like as popular as American Idol was, it’s cachet had begun to wear thin and was on the cusp of jumping the shark. Suddenly here came an Indian-American wearing a leather jacket putting on some water skis and saying “Ehhhhhhhhhh” like Fonzie getting ready. Campaigns began for people to vote for Sanjaya to keep him on the show. America, was now voting sarcastically, to show how sick it was with American Idol. Howard Stern told his followers to vote Sanjaya. Jimmy Kimmel did too. Simon Cowell flat out said that if Sanjaya would win he would never come back to hosting the show, and it actually IMPROVED Sanjaya’s vote counts. He managed to stave off elimination for six whole weeks, not appearing in the bottom three for five of them. The joke was on American Idol. People had grown tired of it.

The following week after Sanjaya was eliminated, ratings plumetted almost 10 points.

How this relates to Trumpian Politics

Donald Trump is the Sanjaya of the political world. No doubt about it.

Part of it is a visceral reaction to the plain, boring nature of politics generally. I can’t really blame them— American media seems to do all it can to make elections and governance as boring, misunderstood and malinformed as possible. Americans, it seems, don’t like our current political monotony, and instead choose to do something sarcastic to lighten it up and make it entertaining. Sarcastically electing a cheesy circus clown of a snake oil salesman certainly qualifies.

In that, rather than voting in favor of Donald Trump, people were saying “We’re tired of this same old bullshit, same old hoops we have to go through, same old screaming protests and campaigns we have to endure, same old millions of mailers and robocalls I get every election, and I’m going to voice my displeasure as a rejection to all that.” Lo and behold, President Donald Trump.

It makes complete sense in that light who his base really is. They’re the rural, politically neglected, populists out there who want to be entertained, and don’t understand the consequences of political decision making. When Marjorie Taylor Greene, MAGA Queen, stands up before them spewing nonsense, they agree simply because she’s shaking things up and they have no real idea what the ramifications of what she is saying actually are. Constitution? They hold it up and revere it like the Holy Grail but don’t understand a word of it. So when someone says “Fuck Politicians!” like Donald Trump does, they all stand behind him and support him. Because the alternatives to them were Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and other career politicians whom they can’t stand, even though those pols know how government actually works. This is what happens when people can vote not based on objective principles and clear ideas, but on a reality TV show level of “Last Person Standing.” In the minds of those average middle of the country people, he’s just abiding by the Constitution since he was the Constitutionally elected President, even as he shreds every other part of it to smithereens.

And as if to underscore that point, few actually wanted or thought Donald Trump would ever get out of the GOP primaries in 2016. He was a clown! But he had a strong support based only on his name recognition. It was enough to do well AND NOT LOSE in any of the early voting primaries. It became a joke onto itself; you could almost hear people tell their friends ‘Pff….you know what I just did? I voted for Donald Trump. HAHAHAHAA!” And then as Eddie Murphy described in one of his stand ups¹, the next day is like “He fucking won?”

Pretty soon, all who were left were him and career politicians (and not very charismatic) Rick Santorum, Ted Cruz and John Kasich (I just heard a collective “Who?” on those names, but at least Cruz is still around). At that point it was over. Same thing with the very unliked Hillary Clinton. She knew what to do in goverment, talked the talk and had the “wink and a smile” chat down cold; but people didn’t want that. Governance, quality and competency are afterthoughts. Now it was just cold hard cynicism, sarcasm and shaking up the system. 2016 was the Sanjaya vote of the American Political System. We’ve been dealing with the consequences of that ever since.

Sanjaya himself seems to have a good sense about his 15 minutes of fame. He’s appeared in commercials and online shorts making fun of all the events surrounding his appearance on American Idol. He appeared in a a one-minute short I Am Art, co-produced with Will Ferrell, which was released online with Malakar playing Bill Vendall, a 25-year-old graduate student of the arts, who created the character "Sanjaya Malakar" to appear on American Idol, as an installment of his thesis. Malakar released a follow-up video explaining it was a joke, since some believed Bill Vendall was actually real.

He’s appeared on “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here” and had recurring appearances on several entertainment shows during the 2010s.

He currently works as a pastry chef in Montana.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Sanjayamania was so endemic few people remember who actually won American Idol that season. It was Jordin Sparks who edged out the beatboxing Blake Lewis.

Jordin would go on to have a successful recording career. However, subsequent seasons of American Idol would consistently decline in ratings.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

“I’m so moving on, yeah-yeah. Thanks to you, I know what I want.”

—First year American Idol Winner Kelly Clarkson, “Since You’ve Been Gone.”

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. The phenomenon Eddie Murphy was describing though was white people voting for Jesse Jackson.