by 
There are days where I wish that politics were a reality show. Seriously. I mean, we know all reality shows are fixed, that they edit out the good parts, and create the winner, but we still watch them1 because we believe we’re seeing raw humanity out of a difficult situation.
And that differs from this election cycle how?
We have robotic answers to even the most original questions, we have interviews that are parsed and reparsed depending on the viewpoint. We have media templates, creative YouTube videos, and polls that are rigged to show a desired result.
I mean, can you imagine putting the candidates on an island, like in Survivor, and seeing what alliances form? You could start back at the Primaries and really watch it be interesting.
Or else you could do something original like put the candidates through a series of real world tests, have them run a company or something. I mean, currently, you will find out more about these guys by sifting through their plans than by watching “debates.”
One thing’s for sure, Politics as a reality show would probably get better ratings.
- Well, not me, America in general. Amazing Race is perhaps the only one I like watching [↩]
Oh my goodness! What a great idea! I like the concept of the “survivor” style show better than running a business. I mean, Sarah shooting something for supper would get more watchers than a boardroom meeting, wouldn’t it?
Maybe people could text in their vote, sort of like on American Idol? 🙂