The not-political-or-racist political, racist TV scandal
As an entertainment reporter I get paid to watch TV and talk to celebrities. The most fun is watching a scandal play out and wonder how it’s going to end. Sometimes there’s a time limit other times it will drag on for weeks or even months (think Michael Jackson or Prince deaths). What’s crazier is how the public responds to it.
For a few weeks daytime TV was heating up when Michael Strahan reportedly wheeled and dealed for a co-hosting job at Good Morning America seemingly leaving Kelly Ripa as the sole host of Live with Kelly and Michael (rebranded on Monday as Live with Kelly).
Ripa felt blindsided she wasn’t aware Strahan planned to leave the show in September and Ripa then didn’t show up for work for a couple of days, instead going on a vacation with her husband. It was later announced that Strahan’s last day would be last Friday.
When I read stories online I quickly skim down to the comments section and see what people are saying. Initially the conversation was about how it was unprofessional for Strahan to leave Ripa out of the loop but then it took a weird turn on the TMZ website.
In good ol’ American style there was racism abound with people commenting that Strahan is a big black former football player and how there would be a love affair between he and Ripa. And then there were references to O.J. Simpson and murdering a woman. And I can’t really connect the dots but people then turned it political by saying it was Donald Trump supporters who were chiming in and ranting about unimportant things.
For me it had my head spinning. Is this a political thing? Is this a racism thing? Is this a man/woman thing? Online, I think it just ended up being a bunch of losers arguing for the sake of arguing. In TV land, I considered it a ratings ploy since it all played out during sweeps.
It was no secret that Ripa and Strahan didn’t get along off-screen. To me it seemed like telling her the news would have been great because they could both look forward to the end in sight. Instead, it played out behind closed doors during a ratings period and just had to hit the news during such a lucrative time. Crazy hey? That’s entertainment.
