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We manufactured fake dissent, to prevent real dissent.
Myriad class/race/gender biases were veiled just in this one “presidential” descriptor, in addition to flat out high school–style shallowness celebrating looks, height, even jockiness. To
reassure us on this last point, candidates learned to “relax” by shooting baskets or tossing footballs around us in highly scripted episodes that went sideways with unsurprising frequency.
“The president has been polishing his ‘regular guy’ credentials by talking a lot about beer,” explained NPR (NPR!) in 2012.
saying that it was our intentional, profit-motivated indulgence of stupidity and mindless conflict that had brought us to this dark place.
(“Professorial” was one of our negative code words for too policy-centric candidates).
“How much do voters have to like their politicians?” wondered Time, the same magazine that had put a giant black-and-white photo of Hillary over the headline LOVE HER HATE HER (check one) in 2006, back when this sort of analysis was not considered world-imperiling stupidity.
What Rutenberg really meant by giving up “balance” wasn’t going after Trump more—we were already calling him every name in the book—but de-emphasizing scrutiny of the other side.
