Originally published at: John McCain's daughter was the reason 'The View' was toxic | Boing Boing
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McCain was a host mainly because she could help get the show otherwise unbookable Republican establishment guests culled from dad’s address book. It also allowed the producers and network to say “see, we’re not the liberal media, we feature conservative guests!”. The power that position gave her – plus her being a conservative – naturally led to the kind of entitled and bullying behaviour described.
The interviews themselves usually weren’t worth the price in toxic drama or the millions paid to McCain: typically she and the guest would reminisce about the good times with her father at various country clubs, resorts, and pricey restaurants; he’d flog whatever book or speaking engagement or wretched political cause he was trying to sell; and he’d dodge any substantive questions from the more liberal hosts.
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Lest we overlook the most important point here, proof positive Ms. McCain is a f’ing nazi to her core.
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She was a perfect heel to be the one everyone else didn’t like, and ratcheted up the drama and conflict that would later be shared on social media.
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Do you mean in the professional wrestling sense? If so, that would mean it was all an act, she wasn’t really what she claimed to be, and everyone got along off camera, which is apparently not the case.
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Who funds Meghan McCain?
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It’s funny when TMZ contradicts the narrative on Fox News seeing how they’re now both owned by Fox Corp.
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Sorta. I am not saying she only played a horrible person, she was one. But that was also why she was hired. People don’t tune in to other people sipping coffee and agreeing with one another.
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John McCain’s daughter was the reason ‘The View’ was toxic
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If anyone can make that judgement…
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This does fit a familiar pattern with modern American conservatives, and also narcissists:
“My bullying of you is just disagreement and criticism!”
30 seconds later.
“Your disagreement and criticism of my words is persecution!”
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Let’s not forget The View is one of the platforms that gives false equivalency of facts with ‘feelings’ and then points out how bad that is in OTHER platforms. I don’t think this helps people and definitely hinders progress.
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Watch closely, Fibber McCain will be running for Sinema’s seat, she’s a shoo in for Arizonatucky folks, load mouth with zero to back it up goes far in the Land of the Sizzle’n Sun.
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Simema will endorse her if she runs.
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Yep, and leave AZ in a giddy up hurry.
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The dumb thing about this kind of thinking by producers is nobody in the audience cares whether they have Conservative A or Conservative B – I’d be stunned if even most political reporters can remember more than a handful of members of Congress.
There is an unlimited supply of politicians who will get up at 2 am and fly across the country to be on TV, and only producers care what their name is.
And the really dumb thing about this kind of booking by producers is that it leads to dull people like Rick Santorum endlessly blathering about things they know nothing about, just because of some McCain connection ten years ago. It’s not even good TV.
Getting audiencea to care about politics is like getting cooking show viewers to care about cabbage. It’s not easy. But producers keep jamming the same three boiled cabbage recipes from the Megan McCain cookbook in front of their audiences and wondering why they’re not hungry.
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I was reading some of her complaints the other day, and oh boy the total lack of self-awareness on her part, made obvious by her own words. Well, some of it was just a disingenuous attempt to garner sympathy, but in general it showed a total lack of self-awareness. It was pretty much the typical conservative “I was canceled for being a conservative!” nonsense, when in reality people pushed back specifically against her support for racist Republican bullshit, and far more politely than was warranted. Of course the conservative complaining about how badly she was treated was the actual toxicity on set.
I guess Trump really was the perfect Republican candidate.
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Deeply. And not only as a cynical comment. Bob Altermeyer’s great nonfiction book The Authoritarians went into some fascinating psychological detail about the high degree of overlap between those who emotionally prefer authorianism to democracy and wounded narcissists. The book was originally written to try and understand the GWB administration’s continued conservative popularity after multiple disasters.
The gist is:
a) most to all authoritarian followers are right-wing politically
b) they make up a significant portion of every population
c) most authoritarian followers want a strongman leader who appears to have similar emotional wounds. His emotional pain and responses are familiar, so the followers feel like the leader understands and sympathizes with their own struggles. So they can now feel safe in putting their trust and love in him as a daddy-leader who will harm their perceived “shared enemies.”
And harming enemies is equivalent to safety for authoritarians. As long as it feels to them like those perceived enemies are being threatened and attacked, authoritarian followers can forgive incredible amounts of risk and even hardship. Perhaps even enjoy the risk and hardship in a certain way, as it makes them feel the drama of a might struggle - something George Orwell separately noticed about the emotions fascism can provide its followers.
There is a considerable overlap with cult followers as well. Which it seems like we’re seeing a lot of them become. Basically the GOP has cultivated this demographic for years, Fox then moved in and locked them in as an audience by aiming specifically to tell them all they want to hear in soothing ways they want to hear them. Then Trump moved in and made them into a cult base of his own.
And now we’re sorting through the aftermath. As Putin exacerbates everything through unregulated social media just to make things tougher for us.
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Oh, I didn’t even mean it as a cynical comment. What took me by surprise was that there are enough narcissists to make this work, to allow modern American conservatism to be powered by narcissism.
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