at-large cultural commentator, The Ithaca Journal
columnist, The Ithaca Times
| INSTANT JUSTICE |
US, Weakly: Infotainment and the New American Idolatry
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US, Weakly: Infotainment and the New American Idolatry
Instant Justice; originally published in The Ithaca Journal, May 29, 2008
Heading into the summer, the American political melodrama playing out daily in pop culture venues as varied as Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show and People Magazine is about as hot (and heated) as MTV’s steamy juggernaut “reality” show The Hills. That show, centering around a gaggle of girls who relocated from Laguna Beach to settle in Los Angeles, is on hiatus for the next few months, as is the most popular television show ever invented, Fox’s American Idol. This thankfully leaves us to focus our attention on another talent competition and reality show: the race for the presidency.
And I’m not talking about the snooze-fest that is Jay Roach’s HBO made-for-TV movie, Recount, which centers on the immediate aftermath of the 2000 Bush-Gore election (spoiler alert! The Supreme Court takes the case and Bush prevails!). Why would Americans find interest in reconstructed political drama when “reality TV” has all of the dynamism a political junkie needs? Recount is no substitute for the blood feud The Sopranos. Perhaps sensing that it is failing to keep pace, HBO recently hired The New York Times columnist and cultural commentator Frank Rich as a “creative consultant.” Rich, who for the last five years has examined the intersection of culture and news for the paper, may help create some political drama for the cable network.
That the 2008 campaign coverage is about as fractious as a season of The Hills should come as no surprise. The last year or so has seen a dramatic rise in politics’ popularity, and the contest clearly needs to compete if it wants to master the ratings game. The summer months were once a television wasteland, sparsely populated by re-runs and also-rans. Now even NBC’s The Office is producing “inter-season” episodes, and Showtime’s Weeds and Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance? are about to gear up for new seasons.
Early this month, The New York Times published an article describing the entertainment-political nexus. Entitled “Sex? Yawn. Politics? That’s Hot!” Julie Bosman writes, “as the campaign stretches into its second year, in some corners it is simply seen as entertainment.” Gossip magazines like Us Weekly and People have devoted an increasing amount of content to presidential politics. The piece continues: “‘You can’t get much better drama than what we’re seeing on the campaign trail,’ said Charles Lachman, the executive producer of Inside Edition, the syndicated entertainment newsmagazine. ‘It’s the greatest reality show on television.’”
And so the stars of MTV and the DNC battle for the fickle interest of the American public. This month’s cover of Esquire magazine features Illinois Senator and presumptive Democratic Party Presidential Nominee Barack Obama. Obama already graced the cover of Rolling Stone back in March of this year; last week that magazine’s cover featured, of course, The Hills’ Heidi, Audrina, Lauren and Whitney (“Hillary’s Bitter Endgame” was the refer-ed story).
In a bitter competition for ratings, the Obama-Clinton drama has turned more acrimonious than anything that ever went down between Audrina and Lauren, Lauren and Heidi, Heidi and Spencer, or Spencer and Brody. If you take the infotainment industry seriously, it sounds as if Senator Clinton wishes Senator Obama was dead. Lauren’s famous quip that “homeboy wore combat boots to the beach” could easily apply to Senator John McCain’s bizarre ad hominem attacks on Obama. When an aide to Senator Clinton’s presidential campaign described Clinton’s husband as “unpredictable and almost impossible to control,” it was almost as if the anonymous source was recommending a campaign “relationship vacation” for the Clintons.
Leave it to The Hills’ Heidi to mend our nation’s ills. Earlier this week, asked to comment about her fiancé’s ongoing acrimony with Lauren’s ex Brody (or was she referring to roommate troubles?), she sagely noted: “I think what they’re going through…gets magnified times a million on television. I think they’re just having normal drama and it’ll all mend itself.” It turns out Heidi was right. Us Weekly reported this week that Brody and Spencer’s “feud comes to an end.” One of the possible reasons? “[Spencer] is making nice so he can appear opposite his pal in a possible new MTV reality show called Bromance.”
If only some media developer could pitch some sort of project to the presidential candidates. Has anybody approached Frank Rich?
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