"A lotta you children have been sending me cards and letters. Well, don't bother writing, I don't have time to read them."

-Roddy Piper, showing the charm that made him a professional wrestling bad guy.

I used to be a big wrestling fan. I wrote about wrestling, got to know several wrestlers and went to many of the matches. I was in the front row for the famous match in the mid 1980's when wrestler Jerry Lawler dropped comedian Andy Kaufman on his head.

I was rooting for Kaufman. I liked to root for the bad men as it was a rebellious thing to do and I knew that wrestling was not for real. Since many people in the audience did not know that wrestling was fake and liked the good guys, I usually was lucky to escape with my life.

I think rooting for bad guy wrestlers helps me to understand why people watch reality shows. I don't watch them but see the commercials. I can't avoid commercials for the show with Donald Trump as they replay it on CNBC, a station that I watch every day.

People seem to get off on watching Trump tell people, "You're fired." Trump fits the stereotype of what some people think a hard charging businessman should be like.

I've been a boss for a long time. I've fired a number of people and it is really painful. People are fired because they are not doing the job correctly or management made a mistake in hiring too many people at the wrong time. It should be hard on the person doing the firing as it reflects bad planning or bad execution on someone's part.

Firing should be a time of reflection and a chance to explore what went wrong. Trump teaches television viewers that firing someone is a macho thing you do to make people think you are a strong leader.

Because Trump is famous, good looking and has lots of charisma, I am sure that some viewers look at him and see good qualities instead of thinking that he acts like a spoiled child.

Being spoiled is something that comes easy to Trump. He grew up the son of a millionaire and used his daddy's money to get started. He got his reputation as a business leader by buying buildings and putting his name all over them. He is a master at using publicity. He may not be the richest or most successful businessman in America but he is definitely the most famous.

I think people root for him for the same reasons that I used to root for the bad guy in wrestling. It is fun to root for a guy who seems to go against the grain. He represents the values of greed and an America gone wrong but he does not shy away or apologize for his actions.

The late John Savage, a Toledo life insurance agent, did a lecture that compared Donald Trump to Mother Theresa. Trump had nothing that she wanted and she had nothing that Trump wanted. Their value systems were totally different.

I don't think Mother Theresa ever got in someone's face and said, "You're fired".

There has been a move to have Mother Theresa canonized as a saint. I suspect there will not be that same push for sainthood when Donald Trump dies.

I hate to pick on Trump as I would probably like him if I ever met him. We have the same first name, we both handle money and we both have been to wrestling matches. His favorite wrestler is the Million Dollar Man, Ted Dibose, and I suspect that Trump probably roots for the bad guy too.

Since Trump loves publicity so much, when his reality show goes off the air, I can see him going the route of the late Andy Kaufman and starting to act like a bad man wrestler. I can see him running around insulting people and spewing stereotypes like Kaufman did.

If that happens, we may be able to get Jerry Lawler to challenge Trump to a wrestling match and see if Lawler can use the same move on Trump that he did on Andy Kaufman.

Lawler dropped Kaufman on his head and put him in the hospital.

If Lawler tried the same thing on Trump, this time I would be rooting for Lawler.

Don McNay is President of McNay Settlement Group where no one has ever been fired in public. He can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it and you can read more of his writings at www.donmcnay.com