Tuesday, February 21, 2017

"We the People" (forget the celebrity President)

C5MtyisWQAAhYiE As the media world continues to obsess about Trump, one of our own prominent radio journalists told his audience today the every night he watches Fox News just to see what Trump has been up to. (He's a smart guy, I hope he was jesting - but it was a quip with significance, and shows the scale of the Trump personality). It's tragic and yet also perfect - perfect because for our celebrity age we now have the ultimate celebrity villain giving other celebrities opportunity to say publicity-grabbing things about him, which feeds the media machine and a generation of one-time news journalists who have become little more than gossip columnists then sensationalise and excitedly regurgitate the latest remarks and tweets, and invite other semi-celebrities to comment on them too.

Meanwhile, one journalist in particular has stuck to time-honoured methods by getting beyond the spokespeople to the real people. Chris Arnade is a man you need to read. Here is his latest Guardian article. This is what my recent post 'The President's Poverty Tour' was getting at. Arnade has a pile of similar articles, he takes great photographs (shown here) and he will be visiting Britain in a few weeks' time.

• Follow Chris Arnade on Twitter here. C5BvbPAWYAAC1VRC5MwdrpWQAUeGOKC4vr4jwWcAAVr1h

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