One interesting thing about anchorman Ted Baxter, from the old MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW, is that he was objectively a bad person.

Oh, the show kept finding ways to redeem him, because you didn’t have unredeemable assholes as regular characters in those days. You were supposed to be affectionately aggravated by him, but not to actively loathe him.

However, it’s not unfair to call him a bad person. He was astonishingly vain and selfish, he committed little sins from theft to outright lying, and he actually, literally, sexually harassed Mary, a sin that was wrapped up and forgiven at the end of 24 minutes, with his recognition that he’d done a bad thing and his concrete action to make amends. But we would be much less likely to smile about today.

Sure, “he had a good heart.” And we were encouraged to love him, despite himself, not hard to do when the show actively wanted us to like him, and Ted Knight was playing him. But even in those cases where that good heart manifested, his instincts first led him in the wrong direction. And those moments where he showed humanity first, his love of his children for instance, do not redeem all the moments when he must have caused real damage, with his selfishness and venality. A wholly evil person? Probably not. A bad person? Absolutely, and his terrible qualities were not minimized by his ignorance and idiocy.

Of course, Ted Baxter was only the news anchorman on a third-rate channel that almost nobody watched. His power to wound was largely limited to his closest associates.

Now give Ted Baxter power. Give him a vast following of people who want to explain away his every gaffe, either by excusing them or claiming them to be distortions. Make sure that he is fed a steady diet of bullshit to regurgitate and be aware that he will do just that, because he cannot tell the difference.

What damage he will do!

But he is still Ted Baxter, the guy so offensively stupid that he will make a Pocahontas joke to native Americans. Again, because he doesn’t know any better, and because he doesn’t have a Lou Grant anywhere in his circle, to regularly take the piss out of him. Imagine how much worse the Ted Baxter of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW would be if he did not have Lou Grant as his boss, Murray as a sardonic co-worker, Mary Richards as the lady whose regard he actually values! Imagine he never received push-back, if he only had people who approved of him, unconditionally!

Can you imagine what Ted Baxter would be like, then?

Now put all that together, and posit one last, horrifying condition.

Imagine that Ted Baxter were not just a bad person, but an actively evil one. One whose empathy was not asleep, but dead. One whose malice knew no bounds.

Kind of terrifying, isn’t it?

Tags: Assholes, Comedy, Donald Trump, Mary Tyler Moore, Politics, Republicans | Category Commentary, Politics, Sneaky Metaphors