Bury the Hillary movies

{mosads}Republicans, who are desperate to define Hillary Clinton negatively, especially after their failed attempt to attack her over Benghazi, believe (correctly) that the NBC production will become a tribute to the woman destined to be president.

Team Clinton believes (correctly) that it is dangerous to rest her image in the hands of a television network seeking ratings. NBC believes a little exploitation of personality television aimed at the woman who could well become president will be good for business.

NBC claims that the movie will be managed by its entertainment division and not its news division. So what? 

Commercial exploitation is cross-marketable, and credibility is precious and not protected by distinctions that are artificial to normal people. The point I made in my column is that political news has become a glee club for insiders promoting competing spin. Serious ideas — whether they come from Ron Paul, Occupy Wall Street, or the young people and women of the Arab Spring — are usually ignored or distorted.

Paid hatchet men and paid hatchet women parade from show to show and newspaper to newspaper dispensing competing paid-for prepackaged spin which is falsely labeled as news. No wonder television ratings and newspaper subscriptions are down, which only inspires more of the same.

The Hillary movie trend is the ultimate bad brew of news and entertainment, the ultimate exploitation of personality politics merging with personality media, the ultimate cheapening of the business in which entertainment and news are increasingly indistinguishable, and the latest devaluation of democracy in which the most important matters are almost never seriously debated. 

It wouldn’t bother me, on a political level, if NBC entertainment produces a docudrama that helps elect a candidate I support. It does bother me, on a media level, and on a democracy level, that while there is virtually no serious media discussion about the huge jobless crisis that plagues America, we are being asked to endure another cheap exploitation of personality media merging with personality politics.