Saturday, April 15, 2017

Sarah Ellison — The Inside Story Of The Kushner-Bannon Civil War


It's more about the reality show than the title. Weekend read.
Hate-watching is a key element of reality television: viewers get a surge of superiority and catharsis when watching characters they do not respect but in some strange way are drawn to. “It’s incredibly satisfying to hate-watch [Trump],” Shapiro said—and the same goes for watching members of his staff. Senior West Wing aides, like the president himself, exhibit a trait that is essential for a successful reality-TV show: they are largely unself-aware, not fully realizing “how they are perceived, because they will keep stumbling into the same mess over and over again, and they are really easy to place in a cast of characters,” said UnReal’s Shapiro. They are, in part, reliable caricatures of themselves.
Vanity Fair
The Inside Story Of The Kushner-Bannon Civil War
Sarah Ellison

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