So Donald Trump Can’t Attract A-List Talent. Why Should We Care?

In an interview with The Daily Beast today, the comms chief for the Donald Trump inauguration committee Boris Epshteyn was rather dismissive of the month-long coverage of his team’s inability to book A-list talent for this Friday’s inauguration.

“What does a coal worker in Pennsylvania, what does a mom in Florida, what do they care about?” he asked. “Do we really think they care about whoever’s sipping champagne cocktails in the Hamptons or mojitos? No.”

Obviously, Epshteyn’s take is self-serving: it’s his job to court those mojito-drinking elites and he failed. But the question is worth asking: does the general public even care about a story that’s spawned literally thousands of stories, tweets, and hours of air-time? More to the point, why should they?

To answer the second question, they probably shouldn’t. There is no pressing national interest at stake, no policy repercussions over whether Andrea Bocelli sings at Trump’s inauguration. That doesn’t actually mean there’s no appetite for the story: the Kardashians generate interest despite being talentless, silicone-infused wastes of oxygen. Much to the journalist’s chagrin, the public often latch onto stories that we find pointless and dumb.

The difference is that I don’t see the nation’s political reporters penning feverish updates about Kimye. I’m not saying there ought to be a complete blackout of the story, but when I search for stories about “inauguration performers” in The Washington Post over the past sixty days and get 203 results, I’m comfortable saying that our nation’s top journalists are spending too much time and effort on a story of minimal national importance.

Really, this feels like a story we’ve heard a million times. Before it was Trump who had trouble getting inauguration performers it was George W. Bush— and this was pre-War on Terror controversies. Bush did eventually have somewhat better success than Trump, picking Ricky Martin to perform at his first inauguration and Gloria Estefan to play his second (presumably, his transition teams were made up entirely of gay Latinos).

And then there’s the recurrent story about how Republicans have trouble getting A-listers to play the GOP National Convention, and how Barack Obama has such a star-studded White House guest list, and how celebrities cut anti-Trump commercials, and how Katy Perry‘s going to headline for Hillary Clinton, and how Broadway actors don’t like Mike Pence, and X actor attacked Y position and Z event, etc. etc. etc.

At some point, we get it: Republicans aren’t popular with coastal entertainment elites, Democrats are. This hasn’t been news for, oh, roughly a century. So when newspaper and cable news alike devote such an inordinate amount of time on a “celebrities vs. Trump” story, there needs to be an explanation of why this particular fracas is noteworthy.

In this case, the coverage of the quest for inauguration acts has been… lacking. Did we really need a Newsweek story on the fact that Frank Sinatra probably would say no to Trump, if he hadn’t been dead for decades? And what’s more likely: a Welsh millennial singer that basically no American’s heard of was asked to sing at the inauguration, even though she was militantly anti-Trump? Or that she tricked the media into covering a bogus invite in order to boost sales for her newly released album?

To the other question: does the public care? Well speaking just for Mediaite, we’ve written dozens of stories on the issue over the past month, and sure, they get clicks. But looking back through our weekly traffic reports, only once did a story on the inauguration controversies crack the top twenty for the week. More people cared about the guy caught pleasuring himself at an NFL game.

That might be particular to us and our reader base. But even if there is significant public interest in the story, there’s the chicken-and-egg problem: does the story have legs because people seem to care, or do people care because they’re bombarded by constant updates? If The Washington Post‘s initial story about the transition team’s trouble getting A-list celebrities hadn’t been followed up with two hundred stories, would there be calls for them to delve into the issue again? I find that unlikely.

Many readers of course care because they dislike Trump, and because it’s embarrassing and a slight to his fragile ego. But so are an entire host of stories that actually reflect poorly on Trump’s ability to rule the nation. Every story written about whether KISS will show up Friday is a story that isn’t about the fact that the FBI is investigating whether Donald Trump committed a liiiittle bit of treason during the presidential campaign. Allegedly.

What I worry is that it’s not the readers’ desire for embarrassing stories about Trump that’s fueling coverage. I don’t particularly have a problem with media outlets chasing a story that angers the president-elect. But next time, maybe explain why the public should even care.

[Image via screengrab]

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.