A welcome intersection of culture and politics?

I am grievously out of touch with popular culture, but I gather it has now invaded political punditry? I ask because this musing is featured prominently in The Hill's reporting:

I think [Trump is] going to be the nominee: He’s proven that no matter what he says, people dig him.

— Howard Stern, 24 Aug. 2015

I tend to agree with Mr. Stern; it's just that I don't know what he's doing in The Hill.

Maybe this is a good thing. Politics was once our national sport, before technology whisked us into obsessions with all things non-political. Perhaps Trump — by securing the interest of the country's Sterns — can re-meld cultural commentators with what's actually important. And maybe some of the apolitical will then come to see themselves for what they really are: ignorance that "digs" popularizers of it.

 

Comments

[ohollern]

Moral rot set in long ago.

[Bob]

Well, the piece *is* in The Hill's gossip column, and if you look around the site you'll find lots of other gossipy articles. Five or six years ago The Hill was more straight-laced. On the whole it's probably positive to have political matters invade pop culture and vice versa, at least to a point. In the '70's there were shows like Dick Cavett's, Phil Donahue's and Tom Snyder's that routinely mixed politics and pop culture. They were more widely interesting than the merging of "news" and politics that seems the dominant model currently, and they probably did get more of the public involved. Maybe this will be the path away from "Foxication."

[Peter G]

Ever wonder why they dig him? I'm sure our host knows why Huey Long projected the sympathetic hayseed rooted in the common sense of the common people. He did it because it worked. So The Donald speaks in disjointed sentence fragments and eschews poly-syllabic words and complex thoughts in mimicry of the very audience he would seduce. And he does something that Mitt Romney could not even conceive of attempting. He has convinced his supporters, subconsciously I believe, that he is not only like them but they are like him and only systematic unfairness prevented them from also being a billionaire. Poor Mitt sounded like exactly what he was. Donald sounds like the people he wants to vote for him. He is The Fonz.