{"id":38995,"date":"2017-06-19T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-19T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=38995"},"modified":"2017-06-18T21:21:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-19T01:21:38","slug":"political-crossovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/06\/19\/political-crossovers\/","title":{"rendered":"Political crossovers"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the most recent G-File “news”letter, Jonah Goldberg<\/a> nerds out on the crossovers in comic books and TV shows, before pointing out that we’re living in the biggest crossover yet:<\/p>\n

Well, the Donald Trump presidency is the mother of all crossovers. The primetime reality-TV universe has merged with the cable-news universe \u2014 and both sides are playing the part<\/em>. This is a hugely important point, and one I think my fellow Trump-skeptics should keep in mind. Take, for instance, that cabinet meeting where everybody reportedly sucked up to the president. As Andy Ferguson notes<\/a>, that\u2019s not really what happened. Reince Priebus did the full Renfield, and so did Mike Pence, but most of the others played it fairly straight. <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t get me wrong: Donald Trump\u2019s need for praise is a real thing, so much so he has to invent it or pluck it from random Twitter-feed suck ups. (Remember when he told the AP that \u201csome people said\u201d his address to Congress \u201cwas the single best speech ever made in that chamber\u201d?) So, yeah, Trump acts like a reality-show character, but much of the political press is covering him like they\u2019re reality-show producers<\/em>. <\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve talked about a bunch, the mainstream media MacGuffinized<\/a> Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, making him the hero in every storyline. With Trump, they\u2019re covering the White House like an episode of Big Brother<\/em> or MTV\u2019s Real World<\/em><\/a>. By encouraging officials to gossip and snipe about each other and the boss, they too are playing the game. Much of MSNBC\u2019s and CNN\u2019s coverage feels like it should be called \u201cDesperate Housewives of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.\u201d <\/p>\n

So, when you look at how that cabinet meeting was covered, it felt less Stalinesque and more like a creepy spinoff of The Bachelor<\/em> or The Bachelorette<\/em> or some sure-to-come non-gendered version (working title, \u201cI Could Be into That\u201d). I kept wanting the anchor to break away to a confession-cam interview with Mike Pence. If he doesn\u2019t give me a rose but gives one to Reince, I will be like, \u201cOh no he didn\u2019t!\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Trump\u2019s tweeting seems less like what it is \u2014 the panicked outbursts of narcissist with a persecution complex \u2014 and more like a premise of The Apprentice<\/em> in which contestants have to deal with the boss\u2019s rhetorical monkey wrenches. Back in the West Wing<\/em>, the producers (who just finished congratulating themselves for coming up with the crossover idea of having Apprentice<\/em> alumnus Dennis Rodman give Kim Jong-un a copy of The Art of the Deal<\/em>) are trying to craft the best possible tweets to get Sean Spicer to pop a vein in his neck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the most recent G-File “news”letter, Jonah Goldberg nerds out on the crossovers in comic books and TV shows, before pointing out that we’re living in the biggest crossover yet: Well, the Donald Trump presidency is the mother of all crossovers. The primetime reality-TV universe has merged with the cable-news universe \u2014 and both sides […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[158,1037,248,101],"class_list":["post-38995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-donaldtrump","tag-realitytv","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-a8X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38996,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38995\/revisions\/38996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}