I don’t know if you’re following the news about the Republican presidential debates.
I try not to, but I can’t seem to resist.
It’s as if a man biting the head off a chicken is constantly crashing his car outside my window. Except the window is a web browser, the man is Rick Perry, and he’s biting the head off the English language while crashing his political campaign.
But, say what you will about Rick Perry – that he has more hair than brains. Say that compared to him George W. Bush is a suave master of language and policy, that he brazenly cuddles bottles of maple syrup in public where everyone can see him at it.
At least we have to admit that he is actually and sincerely running for president. He is not a mere politainer.
A politainer, in this sense, is someone who entertains people using schtick that is primarily in the form of political or social commentary.
Politainers can be scrupulous about matters of fact, but usually they’re not.
Their job as entertainers is to get a rise out of the audience: to make them laugh, to make them angry, to make them scared, to make them pleased with themselves.
If mere fact gets in the way of this, it will usually get left behind in a cloud of chalk dust and conspiracy theory. The point is not to investigate truth or calmly debate issues of social policy.
The point is not to get elected and wield political power. The point is to make ratings, sell books, get paid somehow.
Politainment has been with us for decades (if not longer). Rush Limbaugh is a politainer, as is Glenn Beck.
Al Franken used to be a politainer, until he finally went completely honest and became an actual politician.
The most interesting thing about the Republican Primary-and-Demolition-Derby is that it marks a new career front for politainers in America.
In the run-up to the primary season, Sarah Palin skillfully played the media and an indefinite number of dupes among the general public who were willing to think of her as a real candidate for office.
She boosted sales of her books; she boosted contributions to her PAC. In the end she didn’t run, for the same reason she resigned her governorship: she has no interest in governing; she just wants to be paid for her public performance in the role of Sarah Palin.
She’s a politainer who managed to make money directly from the political system, a real innovator in the profession.
But she’s not alone. Despite their recent moments of polling glory, neither Newt Gingrich nor Herman Cain were ever seriously running for president.
They have no campaign structure to speak of and they’ve engaged in very little campaigning that involves, say, contact with voters. They’ve been running media campaigns to raise their public profiles so they can sell books and collect speaking fees.
The trouble with politainers is the great range of dishonesty they allow themselves.
An ordinary, relatively honest liar or con man has a hidden purpose, but he wants to convince you that he’s for real, so he’ll pick a plausible story and stick with it. But a politainer is just throwing things out there to get a reaction, and will consequently say anything he thinks will please his audience.
If the audience changes, he’ll flip like a switch, and it turns out that he was always against the thing he just said he was for.
Newt Gingrich is, as always, the great example here.
After his $1.6 million payday from floundering lender Freddie Mac, he was railing against politicians – who took money from Freddie Mac.
It’s only one of a long series of astonishing double-thinks that the former Speaker thinks is perfectly okay.
And that’s the problem with politainment.
It poisons the well of public rhetoric. It absolves politicians from even the minor obligation of telling a consistent set of lies. All our politicians are becoming more like politainers, saying whatever they feel they have to say to a given audience without regard to truth or what they’ve actually done or what they claimed to have believed in other times and other places.
The ultimate effect of politainment on politicians can be seen in Mitt Romney who will believe whatever his audience wants him to believe, as long as he thinks they will vote for him.
If audiences started to demand that politainers had to pay some attention to fact, politics might become a little less entertaining.
But it is possible that we could start to address some of the problems that this country actually has, and that are constantly ignored by professional politicians and the politainers they imitate.
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