#21 The History of Hollywood and Politics w/ Kathryn Cramer Brownell
The Road to Now
Benjamin Sawyer
4.8 • 629 Ratings
🗓️ 25 September 2016
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The 2016 Presidential Election is in full swing, and The Road to Now has been working hard to place this election cycle within its historical context. We were therefore thrilled when Dr. Kathryn Cramer Brownell agreed to speak with us about her research on the history of Hollywood's influence on American politics!
Kathryn, an Assistant Professor of History at Purdue University, takes us back to the 1960s, when American politicians and media advisors came to see the adoption of Hollywood's style of engaging the public as key to running a successful campaign. She traces the ways that the media changed the power structures within political parties, allowing individuals to bypass the party establishment by appealing directly to the public. We also discuss the winners and losers in this process, and the ways that this lens allows us to better understand Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and the 2016 election. Along the way, Kathryn blows the doors off some of the major assumptions we have about the past and present of Presidential elections. You know that story about the 1960 televised debate being a key reason for Nixon's loss? Kathryn discovered that it was created by Nixon and his advisors six years after the debate was over. (This blew our minds!).
Recorded September 20, 2016 w/ Ben Sawyer in Nashville and Dr. Brownell in West Lafayette, IN.
For more info on the podcast: www.theroadtonow.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on the road to now. |
| 0:03.7 | It really starts with entertainment because entertainment is a part of the media establishment, |
| 0:10.3 | but it becomes a tool that someone like John F. Kennedy used to bypass the power of the Democratic Party establishment. |
| 0:20.2 | He was able to win the nomination over Lyndon Johnson by creating the celebrity persona. |
| 0:25.6 | And then entertainment channels offered someone like Richard Nixon, |
| 0:29.6 | an opportunity to bypass the power of network news that were shaping, |
| 0:34.6 | those programs were shaping the narrative of his campaign. |
| 0:38.3 | And he really went on the offensive to try to connect to voters as media consumers by appearing |
| 0:45.3 | on shows like Laughan and the Mike Douglas shows. It really was about this strategy that Nixon |
| 0:51.3 | deployed in 1968. |
| 1:01.6 | And with that popularization, all of a sudden, the number of consultants, pollsters, media advisors just explode in the 1970s. |
| 1:05.8 | And they're, again, writing that early history about, you know, what is, how do you adjust to the media age? |
| 1:11.9 | And their answer is their expertise, hire them, and they will help you craft that message. |
| 1:17.4 | It became so important in the Republican Party because it cultivated, it sold this conservative |
| 1:25.4 | message and allowed conservatives to really take over the Republican Party because they were able to connect that conservative message to grassroots listeners. |
| 1:36.2 | And they did it in an entertaining way. |
| 1:38.8 | And again, for many of the talk radio hosts, they were entertainers. |
| 1:42.7 | Rush Limbaugh was an entertainer before he was a conservative spokesman. |
| 1:48.2 | I'm Ben Sawyer. |
| 1:49.3 | I'm Bob Crawford, and welcome to The Road to Now. |
| 1:52.5 | Ben, this week, you sat down with Catherine Kramer Brunel, |
| 1:57.5 | assistant professor of history from Purdue University. |
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