The cable networks have new competition in their campaign for your election-coverage vote. When asked in August why the president favored People and Entertainment Tonight over the political press, Obama campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter told CNN that pop-culture media is now "equally important." So the networks have turned to a fresh crop of talking heads who operate as one-person polemical brands, as adept at stirring up controversy as they are at analyzing the candidates. Here are the major political pop stars to watch right now.
Alex Wagner
Host, MSNBC's NOW With Alex Wagner
Trending Now Because: The former editor-in-chief of the music bible The Fader and onetime executive director of George Clooney's Not on Our Watch NGO is equally at home dissecting Kim Jong-un and Kim Kardashian.
Prime-Time Moment: Wagner, who has professed a desire to overturn the Second Amendment, made news the day after last summer's Aurora, Colorado, shootings, when she dedicated an entire show to dissecting the "perfect storm" brewing as a result of lax gun control and America's "culture and celebration of violence."
Alyona Minkovski
Age: 26
Host, HuffPost Live
Trending Now Because: Once called "Russia's female Jon Stewart," Minkovski fronted her own D.C.-based show on Russia's state-owned network RT before swapping Vladimir Putin for a boss even more reviled by the GOP: Arianna Huffington.
Prime-Time Moment: Minkovski performed an entire Halloween show in a Glenn Beck costume after he accused her of "stirring up racial tension" for having the leader of the New Black Panther Party as a guest. "Glenn Beck," she declared, "you hate Americans because you lie to them, you scare them, you try to warp their minds."
McKay Coppins
Age:
25
Guest commentator, CNN
Trending Now
Because: The Buzzfeed political reporter and devout Mormon—who got the scoop in February
that Marco Rubio was baptized into the Church of Latter-Day
Saints—is now being sought out by programs like American
Morning and Erin Burnett OutFront as an authoritative
voice on Mitt Romney's religion.
Prime-Time
Moment: Coppins, who isn't shy
about criticizing the history of his faith, informed Andrea Mitchell of
MSNBC in April, "Mormon leaders used to teach that black people were
less valiant or less righteous in a premortal life."
Will Cain
Age: 37
Contributor, CNN
Trending Now Because: As a frequent guest on
Starting Point, the pro-gay-marriage Republican and former
contributor to the short-lived shoutfest In the Arena has proved himself
a master at stirring up controversy, sparring with Democratic senator
Dick Durbin and even host Soledad O'Brien.
Prime-Time
Moment: When CNN Newsroom's Don Lemon and guest LZ
Granderson—both of whom are gay—laughed at Marcus Bachmann's
flamboyant dance moves, Cain took them to task, pointing out that they
were "two guys who [had] been through this process."
James Poulos
Age:
33
Guest commentator, MSNBC
Trending
Now Because: The self-described postmodern conservative mixes
wonky talk with Marilyn Manson lyrics and incites liberal ire with
pugnacious Daily Caller posts like "What Are Women For?"
Prime-Time Moment: Soon after "WAWF?," Poulos—a
HuffPost Live producer and contributor at Forbes and Vice—gamely
appeared on MSNBC's UP With Chris Hayes and said: "We're going
to be stuck in this culture-war situation regardless of the ultimate
merits of the issue unless we find some way to get through to the other
side." Then the Huffington Post hired Poulos as its own Gen-X David
Brooks.
Michelle Fields
Age:
24
Guest commentator, Fox News
Trending
Now Because: The comely archconservative reporter parlayed
YouTube infamy into guest spots on Hannity, Fox & Friends, and
Your World With Neil Cavuto.
Prime-Time
Moment: After she received a Good Will Hunting-style
dressing-down from Matt Damon (whose mom is a teacher) on education
policy, Fields had the last laugh on Alyona Minkovski's RT show: "I
think it's great that Matt Damon is passionate about this," she said,
"because this is an issue that now is reaching a broader audience." Now
she is too.
S.E. Cupp
Age: 33
Cohost, MSNBC's The
Cycle
Trending Now Because: A hunting aficionado,
Christian-sympathizing atheist, and classically trained ballet dancer,
the tireless (and, in the eyes of many,
shameless) Cupp made the rounds as a guest commentator on TV
talk-fests (Hannity, Morning Joe, Now With Alex Wagner) and
authored the 2010 apologia for creationism, Losing Our Religion: The
Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity, before landing her present
cohosting gig in June.
Prime-Time Moment: During a
roundtable discussion about Romney's Mormon faith in July, Cupp revealed
that she "would never vote for an atheist president." When her cohost,
Steve Kornacki, accused her of being a "self-loathing atheist," Cupp
responded, "I do not think that someone who represents 5 to 10 percent
of the population should be representing [the country] and thinking that
everyone else in the world is crazy but me."
Nick Gillespie
Age:
49
Editor-in-chief, Reason TV
Trending
Now Because: The former Teen Machine magazine writer
turned libertarian journalist and frequent cable-talk-show guest is
famous for blasting liberals like Rachel Maddow for dismissing Obama's
"Fast and Furious" gun scandal as a "conspiracy theory" and rankling
conservatives with his pro-gay-rights position.
Prime-Time Moment: When Gillespie took Maddow to task
for F&F on Real Time With Bill Maher, the MSNBC anchor blurted,
"Listen, dude, I'm not even a Democrat!"
Gillespie responded, "You will always take the side of a Democrat over a
Republican."
Fernando Del Rincón
Age: 43
Anchor, CNN en Espanol's
prime-time newscast Panorama Mundial
Trending Now
Because: Once a tabloid fixture for marrying—and shortly
thereafter divorcing amid scandalous accusations of physical
abuse (he denied the accusations)—his coanchor, Carmen Domicci, on Univision's then popular
daily newsmagazine show, Primer Impacto, Del Rincón has risen
to become a top political reporter for CNN's fast-growing
Spanish-language spin-off.
Prime-Time Moment:
When an ad for AshleyMadison.com (the dating site with the slogan "Life is short. Have an affair") appeared on a Mexico City billboard in June featuring a picture of then presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, English-language anchor Kate Bolduan brought in Del Rincon to get the scoop. "Why Peña Nieto?" Bolduan asked. "Did he cheat on his wife?" Del Rincón claimed that the candidate had "hinted about it in several interviews," but as with Del Rincón's own
scandal, the incident had no bearing on Peña Nieto's success: Three
weeks later, he won the presidency.
Meghan McCain
Age:
28
Contributor, MSNBC
Trending Now
Because: A maverick after her father's own heart, the oldest
child of John McCain began stepping out of the Arizona senator's shadow
in 2007 with her campaign-trail blog, McCain Blogette. The
independent-minded Republican's star has risen as she wages a lonely war
against party orthodoxy, staking out socially progressive positions on
everything from birth control to gay marriage in articles for The Daily
Beast, her 2010 memoir, Dirty Sexy Politics, and, as of
November 2011, regular appearances on MSNBC.
Prime-Time
Moment: On Politics Nation in May, McCain inveighed
against her critics with a personal plea: "Many people in the Republican
party treat me like I'm a freak, like there's something wrong with me
and that I'm a mutant . . . The line that is drawn between extreme
conservatives and moderates—there's bloodletting going on."
—Stayton Bonner and Laurence Lowe
Also on Details.com:
Cocktail Poll Measures Boozer Vote Among Democrats and Republicans
Quiz: Political Scandals
On Right-Wing Fast-Food Chains
Rating
Comments
Post A Comment