The second presidential debate on Sunday night was filled with frightening claims spouted by a dangerous man who appeared to be unraveling in front of the nation’s eyes. Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president of the United States of America, admitted to not paying income taxes for years (then backtracked), said he would attempt to throw Hillary Clinton in jail if elected, responded to a question about rising Islamophobia with an Islamophobic answer and perhaps most perplexingly, attempted to overshadow a question about his “Grab them by the pussy” joke with a non sequitur about ISIS.
But hey, forget all that, because that one guy in the crowd sure had a funny sweater on, didn’t he?
Literally overnight, Ken Bone, one of the many undecided voters in the crowd at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, became something of a national celebrity after he asked Clinton and Trump about their respective energy plans.
But the reason for Bone’s rise to internet fame wasn’t his question. It was some combination of his funny-sounding name, bright red sweatshirt and spectacles-and-moustache combo. And the internet ate it up.
Soon enough, there were Ken Bone parody Twitter accounts and Ken Bone starter kits, Ken Bone memeification and talk of Ken Bone Halloween costumes. Mashable, not entirely unironically, called him “America’s last hope.” Gizmodo called him “bad.” Less than a day after the second debate, ESPN’s Darren Rovell reported that IZOD had sold out of the Ken Bone sweater and the adult entertainment site Cam Soda had offered Bone $100,000 to, well — you can guess.
This is what the internet does now. It takes a tiny moment inside a larger event, then slices and dices it on Twitter and Facebook to the joy of almost everyone, myself included. But at some point, do we need to step back and ask, what are we doing? Call me naive, but it feels as if the second of three presidential debates should be treated slightly differently than the Super Bowl or the VMAs — dare I say, more seriously? Especially considering that a dangerous man still has a shot at becoming a president of the country? And yet here we are, diverting our attention from Donald Trump’s seemingly ever-growing history of narcissism and hate to a man with a funny-sounding name who might still vote for him.
Donald Trump likely won’t win on Nov. 8. But it’s our continued insistence on treating politics as an entertainment venue comparable to sports or Hollywood that created the environment for him to get as close as he has. So yeah, let’s ignore all the hateful stuff he spewed yesterday and laugh about the guy in the sweater. That’s what we, as Americans, love to do these days anyway.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
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