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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
Why talk shows like "The View" are showcasing some of the most sophisticated (and mind-numbingly stupid) conversations about the presidential race.
Editor's note: You can find Salon’s complete coverage of Sarah Palin here.
By Rebecca Traister
Read more: Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, TV, Politics, Barbara Walters, Ellen, Rebecca Traister, Barack Obama, Life, Sarah Palin
Clockwise from upper left, John McCain appears on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," "Rachael Ray" and "The View."
Oct. 9, 2008 | Eight minutes before the first and only vice-presidential debate, MSNBC's "Countdown" host, Keith Olbermann, and Newsweek's Howard Fineman were talking about "The View."
The opinionated, loud and very male Olbermann was making a point about how low Sarah Palin had sunk in America's estimation by playing a video clip of the daytime talk show's resident conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Admitting that Palin's inability to name a single Supreme Court case besides Roe v. Wade was perhaps worrisome, Hasselbeck conceded, "That was a moment where she should have had some [examples] lined up."
Olbermann and Fineman chuckled at the possibility that, as goes Elisabeth Hasselbeck, so goes the country. "This is not my usual turf," said Fineman.
It sure isn't. But this isn't anybody's usual campaign, and what the (still mostly male) political pundits are coming to grips with is that the election cycle is not just playing out on their news shows and their 24-hour networks but also in the traditionally feminine -- and therefore traditionally marginalized -- world of daytime television.
Credit Sarah Palin, or Hillary Clinton, or unprecedented excitement over the historic candidacy of Barack Obama and appreciation for his exceptionally appealing wife. Maybe it's the panic about the financial crisis, outrage at the mishandling of the war, fury over gas prices, worries about the environment -- all of which are so powerful that they're causing the election to seep into unexpected cultural corners, like Us Weekly and porn. Whatever the reason, daytime talk shows have showcased some of the most sophisticated (as well as some of the most mind-numbingly stupid) conversations about what's happening on the political stage this season.
For example, when you hear people on television these days discussing the Wall Street crisis and someone makes the incisive point that when the Feds give money to Wall Street executives, it's called "a bailout," but when they give it to regular citizens, "they call it socialism," you might not be listening to Maddow and Buchanan or Hannity and Colmes but to Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, who conducted just this conversation -- along with "View" co-hosts Hasselbeck, Barbara Walters and Sherri Shepherd -- in early October. And all before smoothly segueing into an interview "with the fabulous Alec Baldwin."
And when somebody tosses a political zinger, it might just be Sherri Shepherd, who used to have the least to say politically on the show but is now letting loose like she did on Oct. 6, when Goldberg commented on Obama's graying hair, and Shepherd quipped, "Every little bit of white helps."
Strange as it may seem, daytime has historically provided some of the most progressive television in the nation. Long before prime-time TV made room for meaty female characters, soap operas were spinning out stories in which women were central characters. Soaps also provided many of television's groundbreaking story lines -- Erica Kane's 1973 abortion on "All My Children," the introduction of a gay character, Hank Elliott, on "As the World Turns" in 1988, "General Hospital's" Stone battling AIDS in the 1990s -- made more powerful by the narrative intimacy afforded by the daily serial format.
But it wasn't just soaps that pushed the envelope. Phil Donahue's daily talk show, which ran from 1970 to 1996, focused on topics from atheism to sexuality to Soviet-American relations during the Cold War. Married to "That Girl" feminist icon Marlo Thomas, Donahue focused on the women's movement. Donahue once told the L.A. Times that he owes his success to the fact that he "discovered early on that the usual idea of women's programming was a narrow, sexist view. We found that women were interested in a lot more than covered dishes and needlepoint."
Post-Donahue, there was a devolution in the level of political discourse on daytime; in its place was a spate of shows devoted to personal drama. Hosts like Sally Jessy Raphael, Ricki Lake and, most famously, Jerry Springer populated the airwaves with battling couples, faked paternity tests, revelations of cheating partners, a lot of hair pulling and, on Springer's show especially, some lusty throwing of chairs. But whatever else there is to say about this genre, it did what little else on television or the movies was doing: It gave a voice and a face and a stage to portions of the American population who otherwise had no outlet for expression -- the poor and the working class, as well as gay and transgendered people, transsexuals and other sexual nonconformists.
And, of course, for decades daytime has been the home of culture-changing Oprah Winfrey, who made blackness, and black womanhood, not only visible in the lily-white mainstream media -- not only acceptable, not only likable -- but also deeply and powerfully relatable. Were it not for Oprah Winfrey, we might not have Barack Obama as our Democratic candidate for president, both because of her early endorsement of his candidacy and also because of her presence and power in American culture.
This makes it all the more fascinating that, as the daytime airwaves flash with political conversation, Winfrey is comparatively silent. In the past, she has invited candidates from both parties on her show, but because of her early and open support of Obama, she has decided not to host any of the presidential candidates. As she told reporters, "At the beginning of this presidential campaign, when I decided that I was going to take my first public stance in support of a candidate, I made the decision not to use my show as a platform for any of the candidates." This has created an odd dynamic in which one of Obama's most powerful supporters is unwilling to use her considerable forum to show her support, even at the height of election season.
Next page: Barbara Walters told Obama he was "very sexy-looking"
McCain skewered on "The View"
The Sarah Palin pity party
What Oprah can't forget
