Breaking America
Breaking America
U.S. politics has become the Olympic breakdancing competition
Australian break dancer Raygun’s time on the world stage came and went faster than the typical TikTok video. The 2024 Olympic sensation (real name: Rachael Gunn) became a household name not because she was particularly skilled, but because her hilarious ineptitude caused the typical American’s chest to heave with laughter.
There were, of course, Olympians who had trained their entire lives to compete in Paris this summer. Athletes who denied themselves cheeseburgers and sleeping in and living where they wanted in order to train for the highest levels of athletic achievement. But their fame was all pushed to the side when an Aussie who danced as if someone with a lactose intolerance just shotgunned a gallon of whole milk commanded the globe’s attention.
(Lest you think Gunn, the 37-year-old professor of hip hop and gender, had exited the public consciousness, she was last week given the top spot in the world breakdancing rankings, whatever those are.)
But while she isn’t leading newscasts anymore, the Ballad of Raygun is a perfect metaphor for how Americans now approach notoriety and achievement. Why train your entire life to become the best in the world when you can win the Olympics by simply hopping around like a kangaroo? Given that attention is now the coin of the realm, why put in hard work to be great when you can seize the world’s eyeballs by actually being terrible?
It has long been understood that capitalism produces greatness. Profit motive provides individuals with the incentive to invent cool stuff that makes our lives better, whether it be cars or iPhones or medicines. If you can innovate and create something people want, you can be rich and sometimes famous.
But what happens when that equation gets flipped, and the incentive is to get famous so you can then get rich? What happens when the product is attention and you can make it most easily by commanding it? And what if the easiest way to command attention is to be appalling at what you do?
In that scenario, you are creating something of value for consumers, but that thing can often be your own ineptitude. In this scenario, everyone gets what they want: People enjoy ridiculing a laughingstock, and the laughingstock cashes in on the attention they get. So the incentive is no longer to be truly excellent at something, it is to be awful in an entertaining way.
This new business model is great news for the people who might not have been gifted a high level of intellect or talent. The only real skill a troll on social media has is the ability to enrage others who rush to their keyboards to condemn them. Their superpower is shamelessness.
Take North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson, a man whose talent only seems to be saying outlandish things to get his name in the news. Even before reports this week that Robinson had described himself as a “Black Nazi” on a pornographic website, he had a history of saying preposterous things out loud. He once took to social media to rail against the Black Panther movie because it had been made by “Jews.” He denied the Holocaust ever happened. He said Michelle Obama was a man. He said the cultural acceptance of homosexuality meant pedophilia was next, followed by the “end of civilization as we know it.”
(This, of course, barely scratches the surface of Robinson’s behavior on the “Nude Africa” website a decade ago. Read here but make sure you have some bleach ready for your eyeballs when you are done.)
And yet, knowing a lot of these things about him, the people of North Carolina elected him to statewide office in 2020.
Robinson is only the most recent of unhinged no-talents to ascend to the top of Republican politics. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Nancy Mace, and others have swapped out their congressional duties for self-aggrandizing headline hunting. They know attention is the ultimate prize - so instead of actually knowing anything about issues or working to make functional change, they simply embarrass themselves in public, hoping enough American citizens view them as celebrities and not serious lawmakers. (However, the headlines for Gaetz are grim, as evidence is now breaking that he attended a sex-and-drugs party with a high school junior.)
Just in the past few weeks, America has focused on the nutball antics of Laura Loomer, an open racist and 9/11 conspiracy theorist who is now traveling the country with former President Donald Trump. You have likely only heard the name “Laura Loomer” because she is a despicable human being, devoid of intellect, dignity, and decency. But her newfound fame is a direct result of her awfulness, not despite it. She is now in our lives because she made powerful friends who were accepting of her delusions.
And one can’t write a piece about embarrassing public figures without addressing the biggest one of all, America’s 45th president. Back in 2016, a bored public decided they wanted an entertainer to be their president, so they picked a coarse, indecent troll to mold America in the Trump vision. And with the lineup of dimwitted attention-seekers that have cropped up in his wake, he has certainly accomplished his goal.
In politics, as in culture in general, the incentives are now reversed. As Oscar Wilde famously noted, there is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. And generating bad news about yourself is the easiest way to fame and the fastest way up the political ladder.
America is going to continue to be a broken place as long as we keep rewarding people for their willful degeneracy. There have always been despicable people holding public office, and maybe we are only finding out about them now in the era of social media. But the incentives are now exactly backward - rewarding gargoyles for their lack of talent simply pushes all the truly talented people out of the political pool. And if we can’t elect a person of actual skill and intellect, the least we can do is reward legitimate break dancers.
ALSO
One of the first things I ever wrote for my little newsletter here was a piece on how I love trashy dating shows. And while they seem like a new phenomenon, a lot of the themes you see in these shows are actually sort of old-timey.
But now, as networks get more creative in the storylines they offer on their “reality” shows, I am getting more worried. While some of us understand that these shows are trashy and ridiculous, you’re starting to see some of them pulling in people who might not recognize them as so.
For example, the most recent season of Love is Blind UK features a contestant who has a brother with Down syndrome. The whole conceit of the show is that two grown adults meet each other and decide to get married without ever seeing one another. They finally meet in real life, then decide to go ahead with their fake marriage - if it doesn’t work out, then hey, they got the media attention they wanted anyway. (See above column.)
Side note: The problem with the show is that the incentive to break up with the person before you get fake-married is far too strong, as the contestants know their prospects of meeting way hotter people grows by a factor of 100 by the time the show airs. Anyway.
It’s all good fun and makes for decent drama, but that’s because the people in the show know it’s all fake. But the kid with Down syndrome likely doesn’t know that. He probably thinks his brother has met the love of his life and they are going to live together forever, not that it’s all for show and his brother is going to end up with a better option as a result of his reality stardom.
So while there are willing participants on the show, I worry for the unwilling participants - the ones who may not understand what is happening. It seems cruel and shows should factor this in when crafting their storylines.
This also goes for The Golden Bachelor(ette) series, which now has people in their 60s and 70s dating other people on television. Again, dumb dating shows have previously been for people in their 20s and 30s, where, if things don’t work out, you go on with your life, get a job, or try out for another reality show.
But this whole process seems cringey for people in their golden years. These aren’t dumb kids looking to get laid on a reality show - these people have seen some shit. And a lot of them likely legitimately see it as their last chance to find true love. So when they get cut from the show, it could be a truly devastating event - you’re not moving on to law school or a career as a DJ, you’re going back to your home where your spouse probably died 10 years ago.
It would just be more fun to have a Bachelor season of truly unattractive people just to see how the dynamics change. Instead of a room of 20 insanely hot people having arguments, let’s see how people act when they’re just plain old single people. Would anyone watch people who they could see walking around the mall? Probably not. But it might actually inject some realism into “reality TV.”
ALSO
I haven’t written much for the newsletter here in large part because I have been writing a ton elsewhere. Here is a selection of some of the stuff I’ve been doing:
And then, of course, there is my weekly column for National Review, the most recent of which discusses the politicization of science from magazines like Scientific American and Nature.
On that piece, you can read comments from satisfied customers like this guy:
ALSO
My podcast, Wasn’t That Special: 50 Years of SNL is still roaring along. We recently released a free episode covering Season 30 of the show. If you become an Executive Producer subscriber, you get a bunch of free emails during the week including our behind-the-scenes discussions on every episode and a clips package of all the videos to watch. It’s well worth your time!
Oh, and if you’re excited for the new SNL movie coming out in the beginning of October, listen to our free introductory episode, which discusses how the show came about leading up to the very first show in 1975 (which is what the movie is about.)
FINALLY
Do you like dance music? Do you like fun? Then dive into the new album by New York City artist The Dare, whose LCD Soundsystem-like dance grooves will get you up and moving. It’s frequently dirty, but also really funny.