Rudy Malcom, Intern Writer / LINK TEAM
“I want all the girls watching here, now, to know that a new day is on the horizon!” Oprah Winfrey declared on January 7, 2018, at the Golden Globe Awards. She was accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award, a life achievement honor presented annually to the recipient who has made “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” but her powerful speech about sexual abuse led many viewers to speculate that she would run against Donald Trump for President in 2020. Might the Democratic Party bring forward its own celebrity for The Republic’s highest executive office?
Although Oprah will not be fulfilling this popular wish, Steve Bannon, who formerly served as the alt-right Breitbart News’ executive chairman and the Trump administration’s White House Chief Strategist, described her on July 18 as Trump’s biggest potential foe in the 2020 presidential election. (It’s ironic that, in a 1999 interview with Larry King, Trump named Oprah as his “first choice” for a running mate should he ever run for President.)
“I think we’re in a different era,” Bannon said. “I think we’re in an era that media and understanding media and understanding how to communicate on a mass basis to the American people is so much more important than being in a state legislat[ure].”
Each the other’s foil, Trump and media mogul Oprah, according to Vox staff writer Constance Grady, symbolize “two poles of the fantasy of the celebrity president, one of America’s favorite daydreams.” Trump evokes “rage and resentment,” Oprah “wisdom and kindness and empathy.” Whereas he is “the product of intergenerational failsonry [sic] & legitimately rich,” she is “black, a woman, unabashed, loved, genuinely self-made” — “the anti-Trump,” tweeted Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. Whereas Trump personifies “the reality–tinged understanding of the American dream” that it’s “not actual hard work that makes you successful, but the ability to evince the feeling and effect of power and wealth,” BuzzFeed observed, Oprah has “made the American Dream seem increasingly attainable,” wrote author Nicole Aschoff. “When we fantasize about electing a celebrity for president,” Grady illuminates, “we’re not imagining that Oprah is secretly a brilliant legislator... We’re imagining that the perfect, untouchable, and morally righteous figure of our dreams can stride straight off the screen into the White House and make everything better” — that a celebrity savior can make America great again.
Although Oprah will not be fulfilling this popular wish, Steve Bannon, who formerly served as the alt-right Breitbart News’ executive chairman and the Trump administration’s White House Chief Strategist, described her on July 18 as Trump’s biggest potential foe in the 2020 presidential election. (It’s ironic that, in a 1999 interview with Larry King, Trump named Oprah as his “first choice” for a running mate should he ever run for President.)
“I think we’re in a different era,” Bannon said. “I think we’re in an era that media and understanding media and understanding how to communicate on a mass basis to the American people is so much more important than being in a state legislat[ure].”
Each the other’s foil, Trump and media mogul Oprah, according to Vox staff writer Constance Grady, symbolize “two poles of the fantasy of the celebrity president, one of America’s favorite daydreams.” Trump evokes “rage and resentment,” Oprah “wisdom and kindness and empathy.” Whereas he is “the product of intergenerational failsonry [sic] & legitimately rich,” she is “black, a woman, unabashed, loved, genuinely self-made” — “the anti-Trump,” tweeted Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall. Whereas Trump personifies “the reality–tinged understanding of the American dream” that it’s “not actual hard work that makes you successful, but the ability to evince the feeling and effect of power and wealth,” BuzzFeed observed, Oprah has “made the American Dream seem increasingly attainable,” wrote author Nicole Aschoff. “When we fantasize about electing a celebrity for president,” Grady illuminates, “we’re not imagining that Oprah is secretly a brilliant legislator... We’re imagining that the perfect, untouchable, and morally righteous figure of our dreams can stride straight off the screen into the White House and make everything better” — that a celebrity savior can make America great again.
But the expectation for a single knight on a white horse (or, perhaps more fittingly, a blue donkey or red elephant) to come galloping down Pennsylvania Avenue with a panacea for America’s social ills is nothing new. Today’s fantasy of a celebrity president is possibly an exaggeration of the modern concept of the presidency that emerged in the 1930s.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs enlarged the federal government’s role in all facets of public life, thereby inspiring a common expectation of presidential omnipotence that downplays the constitutional system of checks and balances and even the legislative branch altogether. (Trump played into this misconception at the Republican National Convention, where he declared, “I alone can fix it.” In reality, try unseating your congressperson “if you really want a better Washington DC,” Medium advises.)
FDR revolutionized the public’s perception of the presidency in part by addressing the nation through a series of radio broadcasts between 1933 and 1944. (Imagine a less contemporary and infinitely superior version of our current president’s Twitter account.) The fireside chats enabled FDR to boost not only his approval ratings, but the country’s morale, even as it weathered the Great Depression and World War II, because of the familiarity with which he spoke. He amplified his voice, policies, and image in “the American consciousness and way of life” and became an unprecedented media figure, narrated The Atlantic. Fast forward to the 21st century, however, and “the line between elected official and celebrity” is unclear; tabloids and gossip websites, says Complex, cover “every aspect of political life, from legislation to sex scandals.”
So much so that the first individual without prior government or military experience was elected President of the United States in 2016. Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center concluded that “policy issues accounted for 10 percent of the news coverage” during the general election.
“If [Clinton] had a policy agenda, it was not apparent in the news,” it discovered.
Discussions of both Trump and Clinton’s policy positions and other criteria indicating fitness for office, such as the latter’s “lengthy record of public service,” were dwarfed by obsessive reporting on their horse race. Scholar C. Anthony Broh, in 1980, explained horse race journalism, which apparently peaked in the last general presidential election.
“A horse is judged not by its absolute speed or skill but in comparison to the speed of other horses, and especially by its wins and losses,” he wrote. “Similarly, candidates are pushed to discuss other candidates; events are understood in a context of competition; and picking the winner becomes an important topic. The race—not the winner—is the story.”
“Important issues of public policy may go unnoticed if the candidates agree on a position, and conversely, seemingly unimportant issues may receive undue attention because they fit the horse-race metaphor,” he added. (Read: Clinton’s emails.)
It’s only natural, then, for Oprah to be considered a viable presidential candidate; who could make a better horse than someone who transformed the tabloid talk show genre and made a career out of publicizing the private, when celebrities, as The Conversation explains, dictate public opinion by functioning as a beacon of light for “time-starved consumers”? Advertisers spend millions globally on celebrity endorsements because famous people conjure positive associations due to their semblances of attractiveness and credibility. Politicians have essentially become universally distrusted, disrespected, and detested; however, as demonstrated by the fact that Oprah’s support of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary won him 1 million extra votes, we place inordinate confidence in celebrities, who we love to think are just like us. We have “developed a sense of affinity” with them, suggests Professor Mark Wheeler at London Metropolitan University.
The British Psychological Society (BPS) consolidated several research studies in order to further detail psychological factors behind the rise of celebrity politician: “a sign of our political decline,” according to The Guardian. The BPS analyzed the advent of “audience democracy,” perhaps a symptom of horse-race journalism, whereby personalities and performance overshadow political party and competence.
In a similar vein, the media no longer frames issues as related to ideology or party line; instead, it attributes them to the opinions of individual politicians. One reason, the BPS specified, is that social networking sites “offer new opportunities” for parasocial interactions (PSIs) — the “relationships that the public establishes” with real and fictional characters in the media — between voters and politicians, who can, for example, engage in virtual conversation (for example, by tweeting directly to each other). Twitter and the like lead audience members to feel even more strongly that “they are somehow part of the events portrayed.” Moreover, “[g]etting to know a candidate through their presence in the media” can promote the development of PSIs and “a sense of intimacy.” Grady explored how Ronald Reagan, for example, crafted a star image during his acting career “practically designed for the presidency: all twinkling avuncular eyes and an air of condescending father-knows-best-competence.”
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President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs enlarged the federal government’s role in all facets of public life, thereby inspiring a common expectation of presidential omnipotence that downplays the constitutional system of checks and balances and even the legislative branch altogether. (Trump played into this misconception at the Republican National Convention, where he declared, “I alone can fix it.” In reality, try unseating your congressperson “if you really want a better Washington DC,” Medium advises.)
FDR revolutionized the public’s perception of the presidency in part by addressing the nation through a series of radio broadcasts between 1933 and 1944. (Imagine a less contemporary and infinitely superior version of our current president’s Twitter account.) The fireside chats enabled FDR to boost not only his approval ratings, but the country’s morale, even as it weathered the Great Depression and World War II, because of the familiarity with which he spoke. He amplified his voice, policies, and image in “the American consciousness and way of life” and became an unprecedented media figure, narrated The Atlantic. Fast forward to the 21st century, however, and “the line between elected official and celebrity” is unclear; tabloids and gossip websites, says Complex, cover “every aspect of political life, from legislation to sex scandals.”
So much so that the first individual without prior government or military experience was elected President of the United States in 2016. Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center concluded that “policy issues accounted for 10 percent of the news coverage” during the general election.
“If [Clinton] had a policy agenda, it was not apparent in the news,” it discovered.
Discussions of both Trump and Clinton’s policy positions and other criteria indicating fitness for office, such as the latter’s “lengthy record of public service,” were dwarfed by obsessive reporting on their horse race. Scholar C. Anthony Broh, in 1980, explained horse race journalism, which apparently peaked in the last general presidential election.
“A horse is judged not by its absolute speed or skill but in comparison to the speed of other horses, and especially by its wins and losses,” he wrote. “Similarly, candidates are pushed to discuss other candidates; events are understood in a context of competition; and picking the winner becomes an important topic. The race—not the winner—is the story.”
“Important issues of public policy may go unnoticed if the candidates agree on a position, and conversely, seemingly unimportant issues may receive undue attention because they fit the horse-race metaphor,” he added. (Read: Clinton’s emails.)
It’s only natural, then, for Oprah to be considered a viable presidential candidate; who could make a better horse than someone who transformed the tabloid talk show genre and made a career out of publicizing the private, when celebrities, as The Conversation explains, dictate public opinion by functioning as a beacon of light for “time-starved consumers”? Advertisers spend millions globally on celebrity endorsements because famous people conjure positive associations due to their semblances of attractiveness and credibility. Politicians have essentially become universally distrusted, disrespected, and detested; however, as demonstrated by the fact that Oprah’s support of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary won him 1 million extra votes, we place inordinate confidence in celebrities, who we love to think are just like us. We have “developed a sense of affinity” with them, suggests Professor Mark Wheeler at London Metropolitan University.
The British Psychological Society (BPS) consolidated several research studies in order to further detail psychological factors behind the rise of celebrity politician: “a sign of our political decline,” according to The Guardian. The BPS analyzed the advent of “audience democracy,” perhaps a symptom of horse-race journalism, whereby personalities and performance overshadow political party and competence.
In a similar vein, the media no longer frames issues as related to ideology or party line; instead, it attributes them to the opinions of individual politicians. One reason, the BPS specified, is that social networking sites “offer new opportunities” for parasocial interactions (PSIs) — the “relationships that the public establishes” with real and fictional characters in the media — between voters and politicians, who can, for example, engage in virtual conversation (for example, by tweeting directly to each other). Twitter and the like lead audience members to feel even more strongly that “they are somehow part of the events portrayed.” Moreover, “[g]etting to know a candidate through their presence in the media” can promote the development of PSIs and “a sense of intimacy.” Grady explored how Ronald Reagan, for example, crafted a star image during his acting career “practically designed for the presidency: all twinkling avuncular eyes and an air of condescending father-knows-best-competence.”
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