The Election: the hit new reality show sweeping the nation
The modern presidential election is nothing but another soul-numbing reality TV show. The cable “news” networks — I’m looking at you CNN, FOX News and MSNBC — forsake reporting for speculation and gossiping, are becoming something between “Talking Dead” and the inside of a pink Volkswagen. If it isn’t an elaborate, high-stakes reality show, how is Trump, a reality TV star, winning? It’s something out of “A Face in the Crowd.”
If reality is the wife, the one to which we’re bound until death, then fiction must be the mistress, the one to which we shamefully escape to for relief. But with the current reality show of an election, our wife and mistress have met, become lovers themselves and ruptured the fabric of the universe. I’m still waiting for Rod Serling to walk up on the debate stage with a cigarette and offer me some abstract explanation of what’s going on.
I suppose the absurd spectacle wouldn’t be so unbearable if the contestants/candidates were somewhat intriguing. During the debates, candidates trade banal quips, feigning wit like a Klansman feigns tolerance. Cruz looks like a pandering weasel, breaking the forth wall more than Deadpool. Rubio looks like he’s got a control panel under his breast pocket. Kasich looks like the world’s nicest cow-pie. Carson looks like the humanoid form of Droopy. Clinton looks like she has drawer full of confiscated baseball cards. When he’s not at a debate, Sanders can be found at the park, feeding ducks moldy pieces of bread. The audience is equally as moronic, dishing out mindless applause to every half-baked talking point — these must be the same people that laughed during “Friends.” They deserve the president they get.
Politics is not accessible. It’s dense, complex and unsavory to all average folks — scaring them away from the voting booth, so that only the well-informed (whomever that is) may make the important decisions, not the schmuck who watches 15 minutes of talking heads while he chokes on his frozen meatloaf. There are no easy answers; if there were, after thousands of years of debating the same issues, we would have surely stumbled upon them.
Why is it that when given the freedom to choose, most use that freedom to decide which side they’ll be a mindless zombie to? I’ll answer that for you: because it’s easy. Keeping in mind the reality TV election and the cable news funnel, I would like to announce my personal endorsement for president: a half-eaten onion ring.
Subject yourself to more thinly veiled nonsense at www.HunterLanier.com.
