Piker, by his own admission, earns a living at the intersection of high risk and high reward. He’s a compelling enough thinker and speaker to have built a massive audience—more than three million followers on Twitch and about a million more on YouTube. But there is a downside to speaking extemporaneously for hours and hours every day. “If you were talking for 10 hours a day,” he told Regunberg, “you’re going to say stuff that could very easily be misconstrued.” Case in point: Piker has been getting barracked for lamenting recently that equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, at a time when Israel’s popularity is at an all-time low, does little more than put Jewish Americans in danger. That sentiment is not materially different from what Ezra Klein had to say in his own recent essay about Piker—but when you’re a sainted member of the white intelligentsia, you are apparently allowed to say this. If you’re not, it’s head on a pike time (no pun intended).
In a recent MS NOW encounter with anchor Katy Tur, El-Sayed reminded us that he is something of a novice at navigating the ins and outs of the cable news business. Pressed by Tur to account for his association with Piker, El-Sayed attempted a canned pivot: “This campaign is not about a streamer in California. This campaign is about affordability in Michigan. This campaign is about the ability to have health care,” he said. “This campaign is about the challenges Michiganders face. And I get that, in the media, it’s a lot easier to pick up one person and be like, ‘This is what this is about.’ But this is why a lot of people get so frustrated about politics and political media, because it doesn’t actually speak to the challenges they face.”
But El-Sayed walked onto that set hoping that the headline was going to be his economic policy plans, and ended up with the brief conversation about Piker being the most widely talked about aspect of the interview. It’s worth learning about how that happened and what someone like El-Sayed could do differently.
But valid complaints about the cable news industry have been around for ages. What hasn’t arrived in their wake is any serious effort among the industry’s leaders to reform things. I cannot recall a time in my life when I thought cable news was getting better. (I no longer tune in, so in the extremely unlikely event that it does, it will go without my notice.) Democratic candidates hoping that a better media might be wrought from the current state of affairs will draw their last breath waiting for it to happen. There is no saving cable news from itself, there is only using what it offers to your advantage.
Oddly enough, El-Sayed had one pretty well locked and loaded, if his campaign’s press page is any guide. Instead of trying to force Tur to pivot back to the needs of Michiganders, he should have offered up his opponent Mike Rogers’s faith adviser, Pastor Lorenzo Sewell, who attended a hate rally put together by fascist gadfly and January 6 rioter Jake Lang, whose whole schtick is to show up places and try to provoke violence. Lang is a nasty piece of work and, unlike Piker, a vocally committed antisemite. El-Sayed’s campaign has done its homework, and has made an effort to tie Rogers to Lang, but he would have done well during his MS NOW interview to offer up Lang as a punching bag rather than try to steer the conversation back to the economy. On cable news, never opt for the high road when the low road is beckoning.
Democrats need to better understand the cable news environment and its propensity for bad-faith attacks and controversy mongering. Does that mean that they should assume that every time they step on set, they’re going to get ratfucked? Honestly, that might be the best possible footing for future television news encounters. No one goes broke underestimating the civic virtues of the cable news commentariat. Rather than complaining about these practices, it’s better to understand the stupid games this industry likes to play, and master them yourself.
Hence then, the article about how to answer yet another dumb question about hasan piker was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( How to Answer Yet Another Dumb Question About Hasan Piker )
Also on site :
- Drone hysteria, Kiev gunfights, and aviation threats: RT stories that shaped the week
- ‘Harry Potter’ TV Series Due To Hit HBO Christmas 2026: Everything We Know About The Cast, Who’s Creating It, What J.K. Rowling Says & More
- ‘Tender Loving Care’ Review: Mike Leigh’s Tale of Social Workers, Lonely Hearts and Dementia Should Have Been a Fuller Portrait