Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, billed as a “seductive weave of aspiration and Darwinism,” celebrated ruthlessness. In these and related shows, talent was secondary; untrained stars were hired to serve voyeuristic interests, in expectation that, as mediocrities, they could be relied on to exhibit the worst of human qualities: vanity, lust, and greed. In 2008, Palin underwent an off-camera “Extreme Makeover”—to borrow a title from one of the more popular such shows. McCain campaign advisers bought into the conceit of reality TV, which said that anyone could be turned into a pseudo-celebrity; in
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