KNAPP COLUMN: This is entertainment: Popular alternatives to the presidential campaign circus

Published at 9:00 a.m. Friday, November 1, 2024

AAlthough more than 50 million Americans have already voted—by mail or in person—“Election Day” officially falls on November 5. Candidates make their “closing arguments” in the media, abandoning all efforts to get supporters to vote and organizing big events to excite those voters.

So how are they doing?

Last Friday, about 30,000 people showed up to Kamala Harris’ rally in Houston, Texas.

Last Saturday, about 20,000 people attended Donald Trump’s campaign event at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Last Friday, approximately 65,000 fans packed the Superdome in New Orleans to watch Taylor Swift perform. And paid through the nose to do it.

Last Sunday, about 62,000 football fans shelled out big bucks to watch Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, score his first touchdown of the season as the Kansas City Chiefs — the only undefeated team in the National Football League. — beat the Raiders, 27-20 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (yay Chiefs Kingdom!).

Each of these high-priced events drew more in-person attendees than Harris and Trump’s “free” events…combined.

Oh, and over the weekend, the third film in Marvel’s Venom franchise opened to a “disappointing” $51 million in US ticket sales. At an average ticket price of about $12, that means 85 times more Americans decided they’d like to spend a few hours with Tom Hardy than Trump or Harris.

Media coverage of presidential campaigns makes them the most important things going on, 24/7, for months at a time.

Americans obviously disagree. They would rather attend a concert, sporting event or movie than attend a campaign event.

I suspect many of them would rather mow the lawn or do the laundry too.

And who can blame them? To bring up an old saw I quoted earlier, politics is Hollywood for ugly people…and ugliness in general.

Every presidential campaign is one big bad dueling ride of ideological and moral accusations, all of them disgusting, many of them true.

We’d all be better off if we could safely ignore it in favor of almost everything else.

Unfortunately, they refuse to ignore us.

Whoever wins the presidency, we will all be worse off than if the White House were demolished, its occupants driven out, and salt sown in the ground where it once stood.

But at least we’ll have entertainment to distract us from the inevitable carnage, right?