“What have we done to the world, look what we’ve done?” – Michael Jackson

 

Hi, it’s me again. The world is on fire, Bambi is dead and the moon has fallen out of the sky. But everything’s fine. It’s time for another installment of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About TV’.

I began my US election viewing the way I begin every election viewing – with a bottle of Liebfraumilch and an internet curated drinking game. We should have learnt by my previous viewings of BBC Brexit coverage and ITV’s X Factor that these jovial drinking games never end well for anyone who isn’t rich, white and male (looking at you Simon Cowell). But hey, this time will be different! This election will be fun!! Right?! Guys?! …hello?

We had chips and dips and a 27 inch iMac screen for the show, and carefully chose the MSNBC coverage as our preferred poison. We thought about Fox and CNN but frankly, their broadcasts kept buffering. With minimal understanding of US Politics except that which came from one quickly read Vice article; David, Deirbhile, and I had decided at 10pm that everything was going to be okay. We were going to drink every time Rachel Maddow announced Hillary won a swing state and laugh (and drink) every time Trump said something stupid. Because he’s obviously not going to become president, right?

The MSNBC and general American election coverage confused my senses. For the record, Brexit with the BBC was a much better experience. The interactive infographics were not delivered by a wonderfully lanky Jeremy Vine, but instead by a sullen looking man who clearly didn’t want to be there. Sigh. He showed viewers lots of different pie charts that were meant to show how ‘white people with a college education’, ‘white people without a college education’, ‘hispanics’, ‘blacks’ and ‘asians and others’ were predicted to vote. My friends and I looked incredulously on, not realising that segregated assumptions based on ethnicity was still an okay thing to do on major TV in America. Yet when I asked a friend, the classified MSNBC as “pretty central, a bit leftist”. What?

As much as the normalcy of these seemingly racist pie charts disturbed our evening, the rest of MSNBC’s infographics really stole the show. I wanted to pay attention to Rachel Maddow’s insightful commentary, but the countdown clocks kept us glued to the side bar, awaiting to hear all about the next state. “It’s only another half an hour! We can stay up that long!” Counts with their glitzy gold banners with blue and red framed pictures of Clinton and Trump flew across the screen; fighting to show how states were actually voting. Was it too early to call? What a fantastically stressful phrase!

Rachel Maddow was a biased, yet truth spouting blessing in the middle of this conservative correctness chaos. Her facial expressions said more than many could say about Trump in the face of his supporters deeming the questioning of recent sexual assault claims libel. Despite recorded evidence of course. Unsurprisingly, her handling of the broadcast received many twitter complaints. Even though Maddow merely addressed the situation as it truly was, a Simpson’s joke that came true, people on twitter were angry. Why? MSNBC didn’t respect the true America that Donald Trump represents. As a TV reviewer, the intermediality was delicious and kept me excited. I personally wanted more mention of unnoticed prophetic references from pop culture in this broadcast.

Objectively, this should be a great night for purveyors of awful TV. One of our orange legends of the small screen is making it on the world stage. Yet somehow, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, giving an insane amount of power to a coiffured man who used to get paid millions to tell people “you’re fired”  it seems like an awful decision. We only watched that TV show because it was so bad it was good… I’m only a woman however, so don’t take me too seriously.

For those of us who remain dazed and confused Rachel Maddow can assure us:

“you’re awake by the way. You’re not having a terrible, terrible dream. Also you’re not dead and you haven’t gone to hell.”

I advise all readers to turn off your TV and consider hibernation until the next series of The Apprentice (soon to be retitled Secretary of State).

#AlanSugarforPM