’14 Bonnie and Clyde
Rob is such an awful person. What can explain his ongoing popularity amongst, say, 1/3 of the population?
I would argue that corralling more and more evidence of his bad deeds (drunken stupors, crack use, boorish behavior, hanging out with criminals, terrible work performance, etc.) is not only redundant at this point, but actually feeds what is making him popular.
His brother called him a ‘rock star’, and there’s something of that in him: the bloated, drugged, larger-than-life Elvis figure who everyone wants to touch before he predictably dies on the toilet.
But I would also cast him as an antihero type, in the vein of Bonnie and Clyde. They robbed and murdered people yet became popular folk heroes. Books, movies, even a musical was made about them. Why? About their fans,
E.R.Milner says they, "’consider themselves outsiders, or oppose the existing system’. Bonnie and Clyde represent the ultimate outsiders, revolting against an uncaring system.”
People can get away with less and less in their own lives. You can’t talk on a cell phone in your car. You can’t call groups you don’t like names anymore. You can’t buy light bulbs anymore. You feel like an outsider, trapped in your suburban world with a dull job and a dull life and more obligations than fun. Even ‘insiders’ seem to be trapped in a web of nearly Victorian propriety. An MP spends too much on hotels and room service and has to resign. A senator fudges his place of residence and has his life of privilege taken away.
But lo! Rob, a fat, stupid, dull man from the suburbs with a dull job is breaking all these rules yet polite society can do nothing! The right-thinking opinion leaders still can’t understand how he hasn’t resigned. Anyone else would have slunk away after getting caught doing 1/10th of what Rob has done (see Giambrone). Not only does he not resign, he gleefully shoves his misbehavior in the faces of the sober TV talking heads and newspaper op-ed writers and concerned councilors.
The legendary crack video parallels the photos Bonnie and Clyde took of themselves posing with guns and so forth, which the FBI published in an effort to catch them. “The hideout photos led to the glamorization and creation of legend about the outlaws.”
In Rob we have the glamour of the outlaw, in which we secretly gain our forbidden wish fulfillment.