Ordinarily I am opposed to random celebrities who think they can parlay their vast wealth and fame into a career in politics. If someone's sole achievement is having been in movies or on TV, and they think that that's enough to write legislation or establish policies which could affect millions, I'm against it. Having said that! I think I'll make an exception for Olympic gold medalist, reality TV icon, and centamillionaire Caitlyn Jenner, whose nascent bid to become the next Republican governor of California may have died before it could ever really take off, thanks to a sincerely catastrophic Fox News appearance that could be the stake through the heart of her vampiric candidacy.
Speaking with Sean Hannity for her first big media appearance on Wednesday night, Jenner somehow managed to vault herself to the front of the "clueless KUWTK cast members" line — a significant achievement in its own right, made even more poignant by the fact that Jenner's entire gubernatorial campaign is predicated on being, in her own words, "a compassionate disruptor."
Tell me, reader, what is the compassionate disruption in the part of the interview when Jenner — who again, is worth one hundred million dollars — tells Hannity about her pal who owns the private jet next to hers, who is leaving California because, as paraphrased by Jenner: "I can't take it anymore. I can’t walk down the streets and see the homeless."
Truly, what California needs is someone with compassion for the other private jet owners for whom the mere sight of unhoused people is so offensive, they have to flee the state. Jenner is a woman of the people. A woman, I should add, who reportedly held the conversation with Hannity in her own private airplane hanger in Malibu.
And boy does Jenner like planes, it turns out! She likes them so much, in fact, that she doesn't understand why Californians would ever need a high speed rail system when "I can get on a plane at LAX and I'll be in San Francisco in 50 minutes."
Wow! Transportation problems solved, I guess! Everyone in the state, just hop on a friggin' plane. It's brilliant in its simplicity, and so good for the environment, too! And as it happens, that's exactly what Jenner did, concluding her interview by telling Hannity, "I'm gonna find my plane around the corner and I'm gonna take it for a flight."
Jenner also spent the interview making a bunch of ham-fisted attempts to capitalize on former President Donald Trump's popularity within the GOP, calling him a fellow "disruptor" who "came in and shook the system up, okay?" Jenner, who initially endorsed Trump in 2016, had pointedly broken with him during his presidency over his treatment of the transgender community, saying she'd been "wrong" to support him. Now, however, with her own political career and reputation on the line, it seems as if Jenner has taken a look at the lay of the Republican land and decided that, wrong or not, it's better to be on Trump's good side than his bad. Or, at least, it's better to have Republican voters think she is, anyway.
"I would secure the wall," Jenner added, in an obvious nod to the former president's infamous nativist policy. "We can't have a state, we can’t have a country without a wall," she continued — inspiring words from someone who just empathized with a pal whose response to the slightest hint of civic disharmony is to use his wealth to literally fly across state borders on a whim.
It's easy, I suppose, to laugh at Jenner's genuinely awful interview with Hannity, and point to it as yet another example of the grotesque divide between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of the country — one, it seems, Jenner herself has no idea even exists. But it's worth noting that people laughed at Donald Trump's first few outings on the campaign trail, too. Until they didn't.
