Dave's Thinking: Tin Plated Over Bearing Swaggering Dictator with Delusions of Godhood, that's what we want.

Tin Plated Over Bearing Swaggering Dictator with Delusions of Godhood, that's what we want.

The title of the blog is what Scotty told Captain Kirk that the Kligons said about him in the classic Star Trek TV episode "Trouble with Tribbles". (The big fight on the space station really started when the Klingons called the Enterprise a garbage scow to Scotty's face, Kirk could have understood it if it was the prior.)

I think we like our TV beyond bold. Thanks to Netflix I can watch all kinds of TV shows and boldly on display are the pantheon leading men with inflated self-worth toppling over the landscape they walk through, so bold and in charge, perfectly indestructible with unquestioned moral strength to boot which they summon instantaneously.

So, I certainly nominate the old Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek. Not really the new one from the re-boot movies, thus-far he's more of an action hero than a swaggering presence, and don't ask me about Captain Picard. Kirk made decisions, Picard held conferences. In the 1990s did we really make all our decisions that way?

I know all of this dates me but I have been watching the classic Hawaii 5-0 as well and Jack Lord's Steve McGarrett is a simply marvelous construction of ego and self-importance with a impervious sealant of over-confidence. They always get their man. Everyone dies in one shot. And Steve never does the hard work himself, its Chin Ho tailing someone, or Kono talking to the contacts or Danny in the shootout in the docks. Well, Steve will shoot too but rarely in the middle of the show. And of course it is, "Book 'em, Dano." never "Dano, I will take this guy down and book him you go get some rest."

I could go on and on. I think we like our TV people this way. And it is not just the throw-backs from the 60s. Look at Gordon Ramsey, he's about as huge a TV star as there is right now and he pretty much yells at people constantly from a superior tone because he's learned everything there is to learn.

We like fast decisions and instant judgement from people who tell us they know everything. And we don't care about hair. Shatner and Lord both famously sported toupees, David Caruso (CSI Miami) is hanging on to a few orange threads, and Donald Trump...well, whatever that is on his head doesn't seem to impact the grip he has on us.

Do you have nominees for your favorite swaggering tin-plated dictator?

BTW, I am not a nominee. I am a nice guy with real hair at this point.