Celebrity politics can be a dangerous game

For years’ media organisations have been dishing out tales littered with quotes from “a source,” who’s just the person writing the article, and we keep going back for more.

Trust, honesty and integrity are things we’d claim are important to us, so much so that if there was someone in our life who constantly lied to us we’d be pretty weary of ever believing them again. But when a story is written on the pages of a glossy magazine or website we not only allow ourselves to believe it, we sometimes use it as the sole basis for forming an opinion about someone we’ve never met.

Obviously the appetite for celebrity gossip is nothing new but these days the click bait culture means headlines are more important than the words beneath them. And when you’re measuring success in clicks rather than merit eventually it eats away at our collective credibility.

It would be really easy to say it’s the fault of the people who put pen to paper but if you received a dollar every time somebody clicked on a piece of completely fabricated garbage, wouldn’t you keep writing it? If people are stupid enough to gobble it up you may as well keep putting it in front of them.

But when we’re all oohing and ahhing over who cheated on who it’s easy to discount the obsession with other peoples fictional business as a guilty pleasure. However, this slow erosion of scepticism and inquiry eventually leads to bizarre things happening — like a reality TV star occupying the White House.

A stretch? Think about it.

The fact he won the election was testament to how unimportant truth is when you’re presented with the option of entertainment.

Despite what you think of Hillary she was clearly the more qualified candidate but where was the pizzazz? Where was the television promo delivery and the “can you believe she said that?” sound bites required to keep the masses awake when talking politics?

Trump managed to say he grabs women on the pussy when he feels like it and still dance his way out of it but Hillary couldn’t get away with sending emails from home. The sad fact is that considered and reasonable argument is losing out in a world where every article is peppered with multiple photos because apparently we can’t read for more than five lines without getting bored. And in this climate Hillary was offering the public a textbook while Trump was handing over a gossip mag.

The Politifact website kept tabs on Trump’s lies throughout the campaign and found 70 per cent of what he said was somewhere on the range of “mostly false” to “pants on fire.” And yet he won, which suggests entertainment has more of an impact than information.

Yes, he spoke to a section of the population who felt they’d been largely ignored and that was important but what he said to those people was mostly BS. He just said it in a really entertaining way.

So while eating up meaningless gossip and being wooed by shine rather than substance might seem like a small thing, it stops us from exercising our muscles of inquiry and challenging the truth of what’s in front of us. And that makes fools of us all.

Twitter @RachelCorbett

Originally published as Celebrity politics can be a dangerous game