Pure Michigan, Pure lies

In which we consider insecurities, Fotozines, Big ten football, and Trump's strangest lie.

Readers, I don’t intend to (or have time to!) post these off-the-rocker essays more than once or twice a week, and I know I just published one yesterday. But I’d been developing some ideas about Trump’s Michigan Man of the Year claim for a while, and when I heard he said it again yesterday, I was compelled to finish this essay. -JCS

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Well, he did it again. Yesterday, in something called a “tele-rally” Trump claimed, as he often has, that he was once named the Man of the Year in Michigan.

For the unfamiliar: This is one of Trump's most repeated and extensively debunked lies. Jimmy Kimmel recently featured a great compilation of these claims.

It’s a strange lie, because it’s wholly unnecessary, wholly disprovable, and indeed it doesn't even make sense.

I mean, we’re well into the 21st century. No organization in Michigan outside of the Kalamazoo Misogynists Society would have an award called “Man” of the year. And who even names a person (or man) of the year on behalf of a state? Have you ever heard of your state having a person (or man) of the year? Finally, if someone did award a state’s person (or man) of the year, wouldn't it surely be given to a person from that state? A Michigan organization declaring that a New Yorker-slash-Floridian is the state’s Man of the Year would be like the North Dakota high school athletic association declaring that the state’s high school soccer player of the year is Cristiano Ronaldo. Ronaldo is from Portugal, by the way.

Here’s my pet theory about what’s happening here.

1. A kernel of truth

Factcheck.org says Trump was once a featured speaker at a Michigan county Republican party event, where he received some token gifts. So, let’s accept that a few years ago, in Michigan, Trump was honored in some manner by some organization.

2. Validation in the form of awards

Trump really loves awards and rankings. He desperately wants to be recognized as the best, the top, the man. Remember, on Sept 11, 2001, as the towers collapsed, he felt compelled to note that a building named Trump was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. He used a national prayer breakfast to boast about television ratings. He has even been openly angling to win a Nobel Prize (ha!). He actually said “I think I’ll get a Nobel prize for a lot of things if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t.” (This single utterance is so richly Trumpy in about a dozen ways, but my favorite part is “for a lot of things.” Does he thinks he’ll get the Nobel for Physics? Medicine?)

3. Add a pinch of Time Magazine

Don’t discount the influence of Time magazine on Donald Trump’s value system. An Atlantic magazine piece describes this well:

“Time matters to Trump, not just because of the narcissism it takes to care in the first place—let alone tweet about it—but because Time and Trump both arose in a bygone era. A moment of wealth and possibility in New York, and by extension America. Time always saw itself as the magazine for a very specific kind of American greatness. Trump, he swears, is just the same.”

His golf clubhouses have even displayed fake Time magazine covers of the sort you can have printed at your local amusement park, in the kiosk between the caricature artist and the western-themed sepia photos. (Apparently the pioneer in this schlocky business was a Florida franchise operator called Fotozines; alas, they appear to now be out of business.)

The Washington Post @washingtonpost

A Time Magazine with Trump on the cover hangs in his golf clubs. It’s fake. wapo.st/2thpoYg

And of course Time’s most enduring influence on contemporary culture is its annual Person (once, Man) of the Year designation. Trump thinks this thing is a really big deal. After the Nobel Prize, its his favorite award in the whole wide world.

5. Could the “Michigan Man” myth be a factor?

Finally, Big Ten athletic fans may know that the University of Michigan (an esteemed institution, surely) favors a bit of jargon about being a “Michigan Man.” A Michigan Man is a true blue Wolverine. It was even the title of a biography of Michigan quarterback and coach Jim Harbaugh. Trump is not a Michigan Man, but perhaps he’s heard the term — maybe even at that County GOP event. The Michigan Man figure is exactly the sort of mythology that Trump loves, even if he can’t articulate it. The prototypical MM is athletic, elitist, virile, imprecisely sexist, vaguely retrogade, and deeply loyal to the institution.

This quote from an accomplished Michigan athlete describes the concept well: “Being a Michigan man…makes me feel smart, distinguished, dignified and highly regarded by others. People hear the name ‘Michigan,’ and they gasp or stand there in awe.” Doesn’t that yearning for others to hold you in awe sound like Trump? It’s a symbol of the type of manly, nostalgic conservatism that’s at the heart of the Make America Great Again ethos, an ethos common in certain corners of the Big Ten powerhouse states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin that gave Trump his improbable victory.

Also, fellow wordplay enthusiasts will note that you can’t spell “Michigan Man” without “MAGA.”

6. Combine these ingredients in the bizarre kitchen of Trump’s mind

So: Trump yearns to be declared “man of the year,” perhaps because of its associations with Time magazine. Perhaps he’s familiar with the notion of the Michigan Man, which appeals to his MAGA viscera. He was once a speaker or guest at a political event in Michigan with some whiff of authority. His strange, small, id-driven mind doesn’t require him to attach his conception of the world to an objective standard of reality, in the way most of our minds do.

So with a wave of his small hand, he can combine these ingredients to form a reality in which an event in Michigan + MAGA values + Michigan Man + Time’s man of the year = Donald J. Trump, Michigan Man of the Year.

As the great philosopher and wit George Costanza says: it’s not a lie if you believe it.

106 days until the election, friends.