Trump, Dr. Oz and Our Political Cult of Celebrity

Explicit content warning

08/17/22 • 28 min

Celebrities. They are ubiquitous in American culture and now, ever increasingly, in our politics. From Donald Trump to Dr. Oz, the memeification of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — the power of celebrity has gripped our democracy and society. We want our elected officials to be superstars, but is that a good thing?

So today, host Jane Coaston is joined by Jessica Bennett, contributing editor to Times Opinion and Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, to discuss our modern celebrity politics phenomenon and how it’s shaping our cultural and political realities.

“I’m distressed that we’ve conflated celebrity and politics because I think it gives politicians the wrong goals, the wrong motives,” Bruni says. And a lot of that is on us — the fans.

“We place values on celebrities that may not actually represent them, and they become something outside of themselves,” Bennett says. “They start to represent something that has nothing to do with the person who’s actually there.”

Warning: This episode contains explicit language.

Mentioned in this episode:

“Dr. Does-It-All” by Frank Bruni in The New York Times Magazine
“He’s Sorry, She’s Sorry, Everybody Is Sorry. Does It Matter?” by Jessica Bennett
Sign up for Frank Bruni’s newsletter for New York Times Opinion here.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

“I’m distressed that we’ve conflated celebrity and politics because I think it gives politicians the wrong goals, the wrong motives,” Bruni says. And a lot of that is on us — the fans.

Warning: This episode contains explicit language.

Mentioned in this episode:

“Dr. Does-It-All” by Frank Bruni in The New York Times Magazine
“He’s Sorry, She’s Sorry, Everybody Is Sorry. Does It Matter?” by Jessica Bennett
Sign up for Frank Bruni’s newsletter for New York Times Opinion here.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Previous Episode

Your Blue State Won’t Save You: Why State Politics Is National Politics

Last week, Kansans voted in overwhelming numbers to protect abortion rights in their State Constitution — the first instance since the overruling of Roe v. Wade in which voters have been able to weigh in on the issue directly. But local battles aren’t just limited to abortion. There’s guns. There’s school curriculums. Most crucially, there’s voting rights. As national politics becomes increasingly polarized and stalemates in Congress continue, how we live is going to be decided by local legislation. It’s time we step into the state houses and see what’s happening there.

So on today’s episode, guests Zack Beauchamp and Nicole Hemmer help Jane Coaston understand what these state-level legislative battles mean for national politics. Beauchamp covers the Republican Party for Vox, and Hemmer is a historian of conservative media and an associate professor at Vanderbilt University. Both share the belief that state governments have become powerful machines in influencing the U.S. constitutional system, but to what extent that influence is helpful or harmful to American democracy depends. “This idea of the states as the laboratories of democracy, being able to try out different policies and different programs and see how they work in the state — that’s great,” Hemmer says. “But they’ve become these laboratories of illiberalism in recent years. And that’s something that we have to reckon with.”

Mentioned in this episode:

“Why the G.O.P. Should Be the Party of Voting Rights” by Nicole Hemmer
“Republican Control of State Government Is Bad for Democracy” by Zack Beauchamp
“Democrats Chase Shiny Objects. Here’s How They Can Build Real Power.” From “The Ezra Klein Show” with Amanda Litman.

(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Next Episode

Best of: Cancel America's Student Loan Debt! But How?

Today, with the Biden Administration weighing whether to extend the federal student loan payment freeze, we're re-airing one of our most timely debates from last year: Canceling student loan debt.

The problem of student loan debt has reached crisis proportions. As a college degree has grown increasingly necessary for economic mobility, so has the $1.7 trillion in student loan debt that Americans have taken on to access that opportunity. President Biden has put some debt cancellation on the table, but progressive Democrats are pushing him for more. So what is the fairest way to correct course?

Astra Taylor — an author, a documentarian and a co-founder of the Debt Collective — dukes it out with Sandy Baum, an economist and a nonresident senior fellow at the Center on Education Data and Policy at the Urban Institute. While the activist and the economist agree that addressing the crisis requires dramatic measures, they disagree on how to get there.

Is canceling everyone’s debt progressive policy, as Taylor contends? Or does it end up being a regressive measure, as Baum insists? Jane hears them both out. And she offers a royal history tour after Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

Mentioned in this episode:

Astra Taylor in The Nation: “The Case for Wide-Scale Debt Relief”
Sandy Baum in Education Next: “Mass Debt Forgiveness Is Not a Progressive Idea”
Astra Taylor’s documentary for The Intercept: “You Are Not a Loan”
Sandy Baum for the Urban Institute: “Strengthening the Federal Role in the Federal-State Partnership for Funding Higher Education”
Jane’s recommendation: Lucy Worsley’s three-episode mini-series “Secrets of the Six Wives”

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.