I propose a "new word" a-- "neologism" --to describe the New Political Era in the US and elsewhere...
With the advent of the 24/7 cable news cycle... Old style news reportage has become passe... The Walter Cronkite Era of news reporting is over...
Now...Politics and Entertainment has been merged... Fox Network was the first to invent this kind of "political entertainment"...on television... But Rush and others on AM Hate Radio had been practicing "polititainment" for years...
The problem is that polititainment is more about entertaining the audience...and less about serious public policy...
Yet polititainment "appeals to" a large segment of the public who would find real politics...or real public policy boring...and would not be involved in the political process... Hence the "teabaggers"....!
One could argue that the Nazi in the 1930's "foresaw" the idea that politics could also be entertainment... Hitlers speeches and night time torchlight parades where very close to entertainment to the German people...
The problem is that most polititainers...are selling something that may not pass muster as valid public policy...
Hitler was selling the German resurgence is Europe...using every trick in the book available to him... So today's "polititainment" could be called "proto-fascism" ...but that does not fully describe the current situation...
Today's Fox Republicans are also selling toxic ideas to an ignorant electorate...
Clearly...there needs to be a "new word" to describe the 24/7 cable news cycle and the morphing of politics into entertainment...as Fox has done on the radical right... and MSNBC has belatedly tried to do...for the left... Otherwise you have to stick with the old word "fascism" or "proto-fascism"...which unfortunately does not cover the left wing incarnation of "polititainment"...
"Polititainment" is the word that described this new media/political era... We need it in the lexicon...
Take note...OED...!
