As with anybody in the opinion-scribbling business, I occasionally get asked what it’s like to have to come up with columns, typically involving politics, on a regular basis.
My standard response: “The good news is that there’s always something to write about. The bad news is that, well, there’s always something to write about.” It’s the nature of the diabolically double-edged sword of punditry and our political mosh pit.
Case in point: NOW.
You can’t insulate yourself from visceral feelings. This is our country. Our democracy. Our values. Our security. Our White House. Our presidency. Our president. You can disagree, you can disrespect, but you can’t disown.
Now we have to make this work as best we can. It’s either that or devolve further into our fear-stoking tribes.
But in the short term, I have changed routines. I’m still reading a newspaper, and I can’t help the snapshot headlines on AOL. But that’s it for now. No social media. No network news. No in-your-face, cable-TV insiders overanalyzing the obvious. I’m passing up any end zone-spiking optics.
But a reality that can’t be denied is the media’s critical role in enabling what just happened.
It helped create a viable candidate from a vain caricature. As a pop-culture celebrity and brand, Donald J. Trump was great copy. Simplistic, bumper-sticker themes; obnoxious, off-color rhetoric and racist, misogynistic, bar-stool quips qualified as campaign rhetoric. He knew his channeling fan base, and he knew what was left on his ultimate, narcissist’s bucket list.
The media, although ironically–and strategically–skewered by Trump, gave the “Apprentice” celeb billions of dollars in free, momentum-churning coverage. Networks routinely cut away from scheduled programming to cover his early primary concert tour that masqueraded as a campaign. The Republican debates were ratings and sponsor bonanzas–however outrageous, juvenile, insulting and Faustian.
Goethe would have understood.