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Opinion: Mike Tyson, born killers, and the Democrats’ media problem
There are times in life when it is important to listen to Mike Tyson. For the Democrats, right now is one of those times.
As some of you may know, the fearsome former heavyweight champ is about to fight Jake Paul, a 27-year-old boxing-curious YouTube star 30 years his junior. It will be Iron Mike’s first real fight in almost 20 years.
For anyone who remembers watching Tyson in the ring – or even challenging him on “Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!” as a child – it seems obvious that Iron Mike, even at 57, is going to kill Glass Jake, isn’t it?
But I’m not a boxing analyst, I’m a political analyst, and so what sticks with me is the way Tyson, in a recently released Netflix documentary entitled “Countdown Paul vs. Tyson,” explains the difference between himself and Paul.
“He’s a manufactured killer,” Tyson says, watching as Paul claims to be the new face of boxing. “Television and papers made him a killer. I’m a natural-born killer.”
Manufactured killers versus natural-born killers. This distinction is on my mind these days as I’m reading the post-mortems on Kamala Harris’ election loss to Donald Trump. In particular, the ones that focus on how Trump’s deft engagement with non-traditional media – in particular, podcasts popular with young men – helped him win.
The Democrats, some are saying, need to “build their own Joe Rogan.” The reference, of course, is to “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the most listened-to podcast in America. Rogan, a former UFC fight commentator and one-time Bernie-bro, has become a celebrated voice in MAGAland, and a hugely influential figure among the millions of young men (of all races) who flocked to Trump at the polls.
Trump spent three hours with Rogan and his 11 million regular listeners, while Harris refused, reportedly because she was worried about backlash from some of her progressive staffers. This has become a microcosm of the ways Democrats failed to get out of the mainstream media bubble to engage with voters who were either undecided or disillusioned.
The problem for the Democrats isn’t that they don’t have a media ecosystem of their own. They do – it’s just that it’s mostly the mass media, precisely the kinds of outlets that are suffering a slow-motion knockout as Americans’ trust in legacy media plummets.
The data on that score are stark: Only about a third of Americans trust mass media now. The partisan splits on it are glaring. Some 54% of Democrats still trust the mainstream, but only half as many independents agree. Among Republicans, the mark is just 12%.
Podcasters and streamers have leaped into this vacuum of trust. Over the past 15 years, the share of Americans who regularly listen to pods has quintupled to nearly 50%. That doesn’t even capture the millions of hours people spend getting news and views from streamers on YouTube, Rumble, and other video platforms.
Conservative activists and campaigns have exploited this space particularly well, with 1%-funders like the Kochs, the Wilkses, or Peter Thiel pouring huge amounts of money into finding and elevating young influencers who have audiences – and credibility – of their own.
Countering that from the left, if the Democrats want to, won’t be easy. As some have pointed out, many young, left-wing influencers are at a disadvantage. The right-wing influencer set is funded by a whole constellation of conservative billionaires, but left-of-center activists with a more overtly “soak the rich” message might find it harder to get similar funding from Democrat-aligned one-percenters.
Democrats certainly need a better media strategy. But the biggest mistake they could make would be to believe it’s possible to “build” a Joe Rogan or even a series of Joe Rogans. You can’t build that any more than you can grow a Mike Tyson in a laboratory.
To get out of the wilderness, the Democrats need to get out of their bubble. They need to go find – and support – some natural-born killers of their own. Trying to simply manufacture them, in a deeply anti-establishment era, would only lead to more knockouts at the ballot box.
Beijing's struggle to keep the Olympics COVID free
COVID-19 positive cases leading up to the Beijing Olympics, a proposed defense pact between Ukraine, Poland, and the UK, and the Joe Rogan/Spotify scandal -- Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
First, how is COVID-19 affecting Beijing Olympics prep in China?
Well, we've got already well over a hundred members of Olympic athletes and staff that have tested positive twice, which means they ain't playing. They're not involved. They're going to go home. And these numbers are going to go way up. I do think that this idea of a complete closed loop system, the Chinese have more ability to implement and execute on that than pretty much any country in the world. So I doubt you're going to see spread from the Olympics into the broader population, but you're going to see a lot of people with COVID coming in because omicron is so incredibly spreadable. And that's going to be yet one more thing that dings a very weird Beijing Olympics with diplomatic boycotts and populations unhappy about where we are and not having fans and all the political challenges and censorship and surveillance of phones and data going to the government. And it's just so politicized that you hate to see that with global athletes, and global athletics, but that's where we are. I do say that I'm glad that the athletes are still competing. It's one of the few things that can bring us all together on this planet.
What's the update with the Russia-Ukraine crisis?
Well, the interesting thing that came out is this early stage announcement that there's a defense pact going to come between Poland, the UK and Ukraine. I understand Poland, because Poland of course sees themself as frontline, most vulnerable to the Russians, and if the Ukrainians go, what happens to us? But in the case of the UK, either there's not much to this and we'll see that it's not really a defense pact, or there is something to it, and it's a complete desperation move by Boris Johnson, who is in his last sort of gasp as prime minister, having screwed up just about everything over the last few months, get caught in lies and getting whacked by his own party members. Former PM Theresa May just took a chunk out of his hide yesterday and was applauded roundly. We'll see. If they actually are saying that they would come to Ukraine's defense if there were any Russian incursion, there's no way that was brought up with the Americans in advance. The US would not have approved that. And I think the UK's going to come in for great criticism. But watch very carefully what comes out here, okay.
Finally, Joe Rogan and Spotify, who's right, who's wrong?
It's a tough situation in the sense that he's a pretty controversial character and he's had some people online that spout lots of information that's not really good. But he does try to bring on people from all different political walks of life, some of whom I like, some of whom I think are kind of fringe and wacko. I do think you have more responsibility about the fringe people when you have that kind of an audience, because it does actually have a real impact. But I also take Joe Rogan on board when he says that there were a lot of things that used to be described as disinformation and you could be de platformed for it, and that's no longer the case. In the case of wearing masks, I mean, that's because we needed those masks for frontline workers. I understand why it was messaged the way it was at the time was for the best in terms of public safety. When it comes to denials and literally calling out as fake news the idea that COVID came from a lab in Wuhan, not intentionally, but escaped from it, I mean that honestly was misinformation and it was covering up from scientists and doctors that have done their field a disservice and have undermined themselves. And I do worry about that and I'm glad that Rogan mentioned it. So look, I don't think a lot of people are going to change their mind on Rogan on the base of this, but I will say that he's not going anywhere. And if you're his fan, you're probably still his fan and he's going to keep on keeping on for Spotify.