I distinctly remember a sort of proto-meme among liberals rightfully mad at the Electoral College after the electoral fiasco of 2000, that American democracy was less democratic than American Idol. (Or something to that extent.) It was a funny line that was also deeply untrue, but in ways that sort of presaged the coming decade. You could vote for your next American Idol as many times as you could pay for it - a sort of proto-Citizens United system where "one person one vote" fell by the wayside. And you can definitely apply to that joke the enduring diagnosis of 2020s life, "our consumer choices are all-consuming because we can't effect change via actual politics."
(The Idol vs. democracy comparison is weirdly enduring, even as the show itself isn't. The thing I remember most about 11/9/16 is a guy I was working with that day, who joked with me that Donald Trump was the Sanjaya of American politics.)
I distinctly remember a sort of proto-meme among liberals rightfully mad at the Electoral College after the electoral fiasco of 2000, that American democracy was less democratic than American Idol. (Or something to that extent.) It was a funny line that was also deeply untrue, but in ways that sort of presaged the coming decade. You could vote for your next American Idol as many times as you could pay for it - a sort of proto-Citizens United system where "one person one vote" fell by the wayside. And you can definitely apply to that joke the enduring diagnosis of 2020s life, "our consumer choices are all-consuming because we can't effect change via actual politics."
(The Idol vs. democracy comparison is weirdly enduring, even as the show itself isn't. The thing I remember most about 11/9/16 is a guy I was working with that day, who joked with me that Donald Trump was the Sanjaya of American politics.)