American Idol for really boring people who can't sing
by digby
I don't have anything against a little fun with the campaign season. Chris Hayes has an ongoing comedy segment called the Fantasy Campaign Draft that's thoroughly enjoyable.
But this makes me cringe:
Bloomberg is planning a "parody sports-style game show" with reporters on the campaign trail as the contestants, the On Media blog has learned.
Matt Negrin, a writer for Bloomberg Politics, has been emailing reporters who will be at the South Carolina Freedom Summit this weekend, asking them to be part of a segment called "ScrumZone."
"It's a parody sports-style game show that stars the reporters who cover candidates. The idea is that we'll interview reporters before they go into the post-speech media scrum, and then afterward, like ESPN would interview athletes before and after a game. And of course during the scrum, we'll go all in with our fancy schmancy cameras," Negrin wrote in an email to one reporter and shared with the On Media blog.
There's even a "semi-arbitrary point system," 10 points for every 10 seconds in the "core" of the scrum, and 50 points for getting a quote from a candidate.
I know the campaign trail is boring. But at presidential debates these people are earnestly trying to do a serious thing. It's not right to treat that like a game and treat them like props in the reporters' little story about themselves. There's enough of that crap in our culture already.
Sheesh, everybody want to win American Idol...
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They are going to spend 4 billion dollars on this campaign, most of which is evidently going to go into the pockets of high paid consultants and media companies. This is what they're going to spend the windfall on. We are so screwed.
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