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"Perhaps Friend's most troubling insight is that Americans are, at the moment at least, the problem, not the solution. Trump is President not in spite of who we are but because of who we are–even if many of us don't want to admit that uncomfortable fact. 'Trump was … a horndog, a braggart and a social-media-holic–just like voters were,' Friend writes of 2016. 'Trump, unlike the typical public servant, was selfish (and committed to self-preservation)–just like voters, who were bone tired of giving and forgiving.'
"There would be no Trump Show, in other words, if there weren't such a large audience for it. This was the same audience that obsessed over Marcia Clark's hair and child-care issues. The same audience that leered, with Kenneth Starr, at Monica Lewinsky's blue dress and thrilled to Linda Tripp's audiotapes. The same audience that made Viagra sales soar and willingly allowed their lives to be reduced to ever-smaller screens and self-curated feeds. And the same audience that now endures a reality-TV presidency that is, alas, our reality."
(Article found via a copy of a 2017 Time magazine that my sister stole from a doctors office waiting room and left in the bathroom here at home.)
"There would be no Trump Show, in other words, if there weren't such a large audience for it. This was the same audience that obsessed over Marcia Clark's hair and child-care issues. The same audience that leered, with Kenneth Starr, at Monica Lewinsky's blue dress and thrilled to Linda Tripp's audiotapes. The same audience that made Viagra sales soar and willingly allowed their lives to be reduced to ever-smaller screens and self-curated feeds. And the same audience that now endures a reality-TV presidency that is, alas, our reality."
(Article found via a copy of a 2017 Time magazine that my sister stole from a doctors office waiting room and left in the bathroom here at home.)
