President Oprah? President Zuckerberg? The rich and famous seem to be asking: Why not me?
Once upon a time in America, being a rich celebrity was considered its own reward. A whole television franchise was devoted to their fabulous lifestyles, houses and airplanes. No one suspected that anything was lacking in the lives of tech billionaires, Hollywood moguls or famous talk-show hosts.
Then came Donald Trump, and suddenly the wealthiest .01 percent was confronted with a new standard of personal achievement to be measured against. Increasingly they are being asked, often but not exclusively by themselves, “Are you running for president?”
The latest household name to be mentioned in the same sentence as “2020” is the inescapable Oprah, who if elected would be the first woman president, the first one-name president, and in many ways the natural heir to President Trump: a household name steeped in tabloid culture, prone to eschewing fact-checking in the cause of a higher, or more marketable, truth. She could, for instance, expand Trump’s crackdown on crime by undocumented aliens to include alien abductions.
To be fair, it’s not clear…