Personal Podiums and Alpha Dogs

So, I’ve been thinking about this for nearly a week now. This custom built podium thing. And I’ll admit, my brain went on a bit of a tangent. I couldn’t help thinking about Harrison Bergeron. The TL;DR of this particularly brilliant short story is as follows:

There’s a man with exceptional strength and a woman with exceptional beauty and they are ballet dancers. But they exist in a world where everything must be fair. As such, he must wear weights and she masks, among other things, in order to make everything equal. That’s broad strokes and I missed a lot, but I covered everything pertinent to the discussion.

Now as some of you may know, making the short guy (or in Hillary Clinton’s case, girl) look taller for TV is the norm rather than the exception. As Hillary pointed out, she is 5’4” where Trump stands nearly 6’3”. She would be dwarfed next to him on television, and this is not something that is allowed in the broadcasting world. So, she had her own podium made – wider and taller than Trumps. And then she stood on a box behind said podium. All of this was in the name of putting them on more equal ground, as well as making for better (and less awkward looking) national programming.

But surely there’s a difference between Tom Cruise standing on a box while filming a movie where he plays a fictional bad-ass and Hillary Clinton attempting to look taller so her political opponent won’t make her look so diminutive. Surely politics doesn’t play by the same rules as network television and blockbuster movies?

And just for a moment let’s look beyond the already over-talked statistics regarding the three inches of extra height belonging to the average CEO, and perhaps even the thickness of their hair, and let’s delve into the problem at hand.

Unless I am way off base, I can’t imagine anyone arguing that the person with the greatest vision, the strongest work ethic, the purest talent, etc., should not be in charge of our largest and most valuable companies, making our laws, and leading our people. And if this is the case, why do we bother with the rest at all? Obviously Harrison Bergeron was a satire of “levers”, but it was also a satire of the way people viewed communism at the time.

In that case, being true to Kurt Vonnegut, is it so unreasonable to imagine picking the next President of the United States of America by listening to speeches they personally wrote, but read by the same voice actor, where each candidate does their best to detail what they believe the biggest problems in America are, and more specifically, how they intend to solve said problems? In other words, would we not, in some way, be better decision makers if physicality were entirely removed?

Let’s look at, for a real life example, the longest serving President in United States History. FDR, voted in for four terms, suffered from Polio and was, for much of his public life, in a wheelchair. There is evidence nearly everywhere of how he tried his best to avoid photographs (or even destroy them) that showed his weakness. But lucky for FDR, the press was a bit different back then, and more importantly, there was no television. He was primarily a radio voice and the occasional photo in a newspaper where he was propped up or “standing” behind something. He often made his way to a podium with a cane instead of crutches and held himself up with his arms while speaking, despite the fact that he was wheelchair bound for nearly eleven years before his first election. What if we never had an FDR because there was television? Or, more disturbingly, could we realistically ever have a handicapped President again?

And more recent Presidents also exemplify this point, if only hypothetically. Would Barack Obama have been elected if no one knew he was an African-American? Would Hillary have the support she does if she was unknown to be a woman? We don’t know these answers obviously, but if we look at our dubious track record both in the business world as well as the political sphere of choosing candidates based on more or less irrelevant information, can we not assume the worst?

The other option, I worry, is that we truly believe that a younger, more handsome, taller, thicker-haired gentleman is a better candidate to run both our country and our largest businesses than an equally (or perhaps more) knowledgeable and talented bald old woman who stands at four feet tall with a hunchback.

Either way, I claim not to have the answers, but rather a series of questions:

1. Would our decisions be made better blind (deaf and dumb), and why?
2. Is it really the case that Americans, and perhaps people around the world, believe that people with more “attractive” traits are actually more capable?
3. Are we, as a species, so driven to be led by an alpha that we are actually blinded by physical traits, to the point where we choose less talented people who better fit the bill instinctually?
4. In your work, personally, do you see this? Do you see the opposite? What are your general thoughts?

I'd love to hear your opinions.

Until next time, This is The Uncontortionist.