The Slatest

Today in Conservative Media: The Failing Emmys Prove America Is Tired of Hollywood’s Politics

Host Stephen Colbert speaks onstage during the 69th Emmy Awards at the Microsoft Theatre on Sunday in Los Angeles.

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Conservatives sounded off about Sunday’s very political and very underwatched Emmy Awards on Sunday night. “After, last year’s award show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel came in with the lowest numbers in the show’s history, early numbers from Nielsen data show that this year’s star-studded event hosted by Stephen Colbert did just as bad, according to a report Monday by Variety,” the Daily Caller’s Katie Jerkovich noted. “Final numbers for Sunday night were later adjusted showing a 2.5 rating for the [18-49] demographic and 11.4 million viewers. In 2015, the Emmys netted a 3.6 million viewers in the same demographic and 11.9 million viewers total for the star-studded show.”

The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro joined a chorus of other writers in blaming the low ratings on the jokes told at the expense of the Trump administration throughout the night:

Last night’s Emmy Awards crashed and burned in the ratings. And it’s no wonder. Thanks to a combination of Steven Colbert’s “courageous” attacks on President Trump and celebrations of a bunch of shows nobody watches (The Handmaid’s Tale and Big, Little Lies, anyone?), more Americans than ever tuned out. And that follows last year’s debacle, when Jimmy Kimmel’s hosting carried the show to its lowest rating to that point. Hollywood is sliding, and it can’t figure out why.

Politics does have a lot to do with it. That’s because Americans have substituted the culture wars for political dialogue. We no longer care much about policy, apparently — President Trump has spent the last two weeks cutting deals with Democrats, and most Republicans and Democrats don’t seem to be backing off their positions with regard to Trump. Trump may be governing as a centrist Democrat, but Hollywood is still painting him as a pure evil, the future leader of a fascist dystopia; Republicans, meanwhile, continue to paint him as a vigorous, burly warrior on behalf of American values. Rarely has a Republican president made so nice with Democrats; rarely has that same Republican president been treated as Nero by Democratic cultural figures.

National Review’s Kyle Smith agreed. “The co-dependent relationship of celebrities to Trump is like that of two bitter, drunken spouses who hurl abuse at each other before they start making out,” he wrote. “Most Americans, even those who didn’t vote for Trump, are simply getting on with their lives these days, more worried about their car payment or how their kids are faring in school than about Washington politics.”

The Resurgent’s Marc Giller focused on Stephen Colbert’s performance as host, which included multiple barbs at Trump:

He wasn’t there to entertain. Sure, he paid some lip-service to Hollywood’s narcissism and other foilables—but rest assured, everyone knew Colbert was playing to his people. Not the dwindling number of souls who still care about this stuff watching the spectacle from home, but rather his fellow travelers in the auditorium: the self-coronated Tinseltown royalty, whose monolithic politics are exceeded only by their monolithic preening. Colbert worked them all like a Heidi Fleiss call girl working Charlie Sheen, telling them all what they wanted to hear and stroking them in all the right places.

“That Colbert would end up delivering numerous barbs towards President Trump and the GOP throughout the night was a foregone conclusion,” the Federalist’s Brad Slager wrote. “It is rather amazing, though, there could be no material found to skewer Democrats.” A few writers took aim at liberal outrage over a bit featuring former White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes criticized on Twitter for “lying to the American people on behalf of the most powerful person in [the] US.”  The Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher called Rhodes a hypocrite. “The Obama administration lied about the Iran deal, and Ben Rhodes crafted the lie,” he wrote. “And now, that same guy is outraged because Sean Spicer lied about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, and the Emmys invited him on to joke about it.” Hot Air’s Allahpundit argued that Spicer was one of the more sympathetic figures of the Trump administration. “He never came off as sinister; far more often he was pitiful, which I’m sure is why the gag he was involved in last night referenced the lie about crowd size in his first press briefing after the inauguration,” he wrote. “That was Spicer’s defining moment: It was so obviously untrue, and so obviously done to soothe Trump’s fragile ego, that he seemed pathetic more so than malevolent.”

In other news:

Conservatives delighted in the misfortunes of Rolling Stone in the wake of news that the magazine is up for sale. RedState’s Brandon Morse wrote that the debunked UVA story “A Rape on Campus” marked an important point in the magazine’s decline.

After dragging both the college through the dirt, and endangering the lives of the Phi Kappa Psi members, the story was proven to be completely fabricated. “Jackie” turned out to be a liar with a history of making false claims for attention. The article’s author, Sabrina Erdely, was discovered to have not fact checked Jackie’s claim, and was discovered to have a history of unethical reporting around rape cases. …

Whoever buys the flaming pile of feces that is the Rolling Stone has a long road ahead of it. Its partisan reporting, and willingness to endanger innocent lives has black marked a once great magazine into paper people wouldn’t line their birdcages with.

“When did Rolling Stone die?” Breitbart’s Daniel Flynn asked. “When it morphed from newsprint to glossy? When it moved from San Francisco to New York? When it attempted to open up a chain of restaurants in imitation of the Hard Rock Café? When it put the stars of something called ‘Gossip Girl’ on its front page both licking a two-scoop, ice-cream cone or made coverboys of the Backstreet Boys with their pants down to their ankles or posing Sarah Michelle Gellar with her legs akimbo on a Cadillac?”

At the Daily Caller, Ian Miles Cheong declared Rolling Stone another casualty of internet-driven changes to journalism. “The almost 50-year-old magazine has been largely supplanted by online media, which it has refused to properly embrace due to the stubbornness of its founder, Jann S. Wenner, and his death grip of outdated publishing models even as print advertising revenues dry up,” he wrote. “As other companies ramp up their media presence online through videos and breaking news, Rolling Stone continues to focus on long-form journalism. Readers don’t head to it for up-to-date stories.”