By The People

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

Politics wearies me. Super Tuesday made me especially weary, because from the cheap seats it looked like a throwdown between an ass and a bigot. Sorry, Republicans. (Mostly sorry these are your candidates.)

So then I wrote this, and frankly, I think I sold myself on the idea. I mean, I'd watch it.

BY THE PEOPLE
or
How Reality Television Did Away With Campaign Ads
by Sam Starbuck

Mr. Moseley is thirty-five years old, and has voted in every presidential election since his eighteenth birthday.

How many of you can say the same? No fudging, now. We'll forgive you, even if you lived in Florida.

Moseley is about to have a revelation.

The restaurant is obviously geared for a different hour and a different crowd; the dinner rush will be noisy people eager to escape the workday, eager to be overstimulated, and this place can provide. There are three televisions, all playing different things -- news, sports, televised court proceedings -- but none of them have the volume up. The noise comes from a radio station with no DJs. It's not a new idea.

At the moment it's playing ads, and this is where the revelation comes in, because as Moseley, a television ad exec, sits in the nearly-empty restaurant and eats his french fries, a vision appears to him. A vision of two Republican political candidates on the screen playing the news channel.

And he hears a voice. The voice is excited, brimming to tell the listener about a new reality television show airing for the first time in two days.

And Mr. Moseley, who listens to ads because that's his job, wonders, Why isn't anyone that excited over those two would-be presidents?

***

"I don't hate the idea," Borman tells him, when he pitches it over drinks later that night, the salt of his dinner still crackling in his teeth. "I don't know if I love it, but I don't hate it. Here's the thing: there's no way you'll get it on the air."

"I think there is," Moseley answers, leaning over his drink. "It's just a matter of contracts. It's a sales pitch."

"You are good at sales pitches," Borman agrees.

"I can sell the fuck out of this. I can, Borman."

"You don't need to sell it to me. How do we get them on board? The candidates?"

Moseley sits back. "We need a plant."

Here's the idea: you remember when banks wanted to charge for ATM cards, right? It wasn't that long ago. But to make it work either every bank had to go in, or none could go in, because if only one bank charges, why, people will just take their money elsewhere. Even people who would pay the charge are so affronted at the way people trying to pull out their money are treated that they pull out too. Boom goes the bank. (Boom goes the economy.)

But.

If every bank went in and one bank held out...well, that bank would be where everyone went. Because there's an advantage to it. Life is about advantages.

"We're talking about the reverse here," Moseley says, when it seems like Borman understands. "One person going in on this gets the advantage of air time."

"Fair time. You can't give more campaign minutes to one candidate over another."

"Fuck fair time, there are a million ways around it."

Borman looks tired and a little drunk. "So?"

"So we need this plant, right, someone who's going to leap at the chance like it's their ticket home. Then everyone else goes, hey, what does this guy know that we don't know?"

Moseley presses his hands together, then flexes his fingers through the gaps. Here's the church, here's the steeple...

"Everyone signs," Borman says, understanding dawning. "Everyone jumps on board."

***

This means, of course, that Moseley needs to pitch the idea twice: once to their plant, who actually matters, and once to everyone else, who doesn't. Not yet, anyway. Perhaps not ever, even though one of them will be President.

"The presidential race isn't about real transparency," he says in the mirror, practicing his pitch. "It hasn't been for a long time. Not since Nixon and Kennedy, at least. Perhaps much longer. So how do we bring transparency back to the race?"

His reflection doesn't answer, so he answers for it.

"We don't."

***

Borman gives him a development team and Moseley puts them to work inventing a television show. They're enthusiastic, as soon as they realize what this could mean.

Here's the thing: a presidential candidate can spend a day serving food at a soup kitchen, but the news is never, ever, going to play more than a thirty-second highlight reel. The papers and even the websites are only going to run still photos. Whereas if you put him or her under a camera for the entire day, and then you take that back and edit it into the forty minutes a reality show runs to...

People snap. People get cranky, they fuck up, they don't make the cut. And you can put it all on the television.

It's not real. It's still fake. But it's reality-television fake. So at least The People know it's fake.

Reality television isn't about reality, in case you hadn't guessed. It's still about stories. But it's about crafting those stories from raw footage, and the viewers and the editors both know that's what it is.

Nobody needs reality. It's not like they were getting it from the politicians anyway.

"That's the slogan," Moseley says, when a bright young woman named Deb points this out. "That's how we sell the show."

Nobody needs reality.

It should be scary, but it's not.

***

They say more people vote in the final round of American Idol than vote in presidential elections. Maybe it's true, maybe not, but it's an enticing idea.

People love a good story.

Challenges are the backbone of reality television. They tell you how people act under stress and they show you who's the best. The best win the challenge. Or they collapse trying.

-- Put a presidential candidate in charge of a community election for two days. What happens? Who wins?

-- Take 'em to an evangelical church on Sunday morning. Take 'em to a gay club on Sunday night. On Monday, the churchgoers and the clubbers vote. Who wins?

-- Plant actors as the homeless to harass them. (No real homeless people; they might not do it right.) Who reacts? Who wins? How do you even win that idea?

-- Paintball! (You know you want it.)

-- Make them run a business.

-- Make them work a factory line.

-- Make them survive on the street for a night with no money. As an added bonus, warn nearby stores not to help them.

-- Make them run a mile.

-- And give a speech at the end.

Who wins?

Put them in a house together and see who cooks, who cleans, who gripes, who doesn't put the seat down, who wanders around in a state of undress (please not McGinness, the independent candidate from Montana; please Jones, the Republican candidate from Washington state).

Image is everything. You can keep that up fourteen hours a day, but you can't stop yourself from snoring.

Nobody needs reality. Even on the rare occasions they get it.

***

To Borman's surprise, Moseley's plant is Derek Svenson, an independent candidate who has stood for the last four elections. Anyone can, if they turn in the right paperwork; it happens all the time. They campaign locally and nobody votes for them, because nobody knows who the hell they are. Svenson is one of these.

"Not the big players?" Borman asks, walking Moseley to the conference room where Svenson is waiting for him in blue jeans and a t-shirt.

"No, they wouldn't let themselves be bossed enough. You have to pick someone who has nothing to lose."

Svenson listens to Moseley's pitch, drinks a Diet Coke, and laughs.

"Why the hell not?" he says.

Moseley doesn't tell Borman he told him so.

At least, not until the big meet, when he has fifteen presidential candidates and ten vice-presidential hopefuls in one room and Svenson says yes --

And ten minutes later, so does Jones.

She toys with her pearls and pats her gorgeous hair and says, "I'm in."

If the Republicans are in, the Dems are in. The Independents are in. The Libertarians think, fuck yeah.

***

So this is how the presidential election of 2024 goes: nobody runs a campaign ad. Nobody can campaign; they're all locked up in a house together and only go out for their challenges, sometimes not even then. They can't control what people see. They can't control their images. They live the images, or they die by them.

It sounds kind of nice when you put it that way. Imagine one hour dedicated to watching presidential hopefuls screw up, and nothing else the whole rest of the week.

As planned, most of the little indy candidates leave first. A shocking surprise, the leading Democratic candidate is kicked out in the tenth week. The Republicans have two left, the Democrats one --

And then there's Svenson, who has become the peoples' hero. Quiet, polite, brutally efficient Svenson, who has won every carefully edited debate on Who Wants To Run The USA?

Give four political candidates each a hot-dog cart and add up the end of day profits? Svenson sells the hell out of a hot dog. Give four political candidates a room full of fourteen-year-olds and ask them to teach history class? Svenson has them eating out of his hand.

Moseley's pretty sure Gerhard (Republican, Texas) was hitting on some of his students.

People hold president parties. People talk about the election and plot who they're going to vote for. True, there are twelve deaths attributed to fights that break out during president parties, but that's not the show's fault.

And then there were three: two Republicans (Jones from Washington, Gerhard from Texas) and Svenson (from Berkeley, California, where he normally teaches political science).

"Can he win?" Borman asks Moseley, in the editing room. Reality TV has come a long way since The Bachelor. Give him a week's worth of tape, Moseley promises the network, and he can give you a television show twelve hours later.

On Election Day, nobody will go to the polls; they'll sit down after dinner to watch Who Wants To Run The USA? and when the time is right, phone in their vote, or register it on the website. The poor website is going to break under the strain, but the techs assure him they have backup servers waiting for when it happens. They're on every network, they're going to be on every morning talk-radio show and news outlet in the country.

The candidates are obliged by production company contract to abide by the decision of the people. This is where this President will be elected.

Or maybe this is, the stuffy little editing booth with its whirring computers and whispering people.

"Can Svenson win?" Moseley asks the air, repeating Borman's query.

"Jesus, I hope so," says one of the editors.

"Ah ah, no partisanship on behalf of the show," Moseley chides.

"Don't tell me you want Jones to win."

"I don't care who wins," Moseley replies, eyes on the editing screen. It's true. The possibilities are endless now, with mania for this new form of democracy sweeping the nation, even catching hold overseas. He has already made a fortune, and he'll make more. He doesn't have to care who wins.

He can market this to other countries. He can market this to countries that aren't even democracies yet. He can make the leaders of the world run races for him.

Mr. Moseley is thirty-six years old, and the country is cradled in the palm of his hand.

It's a good thing he's a patriot, or he might be tempted to close his fingers.

Open the doors, and where's all the people?

***

WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

BROADCASTING LIVE ON EVERY CHANNEL

SPONSORED BY:
COCA COLA
CHEVRON
and VISA

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER.........Phil Borman
PRODUCER...................Mike Moseley

STARRING........................................

***



If you liked this story, why not check out my novels, my writing blog, or my personal blog? None of it is like this story, but I'm told self-promotion is the thing to do these days.