The Election on Main Street
Two days before Election Day 1924, Anne O'Hare McCormick lamented inĀ New York Times Magazine that the average American cared more about sports and films than politics.
Referencing the baseball team that would later move in 1972 and become the Texas Rangers:
Listen to Main Street, and you will hear that the Senators on the diamond arouse more interest than the Senators under the dome... More people gather round the scoreboard and fill the moving-picture houses than assemble for political meetings anywhere.
That actually feels less true to me now.
Sure, sports and entertainment still loom huge. America has certainly spent the past week debating Bronny James' lackluster NBA debut and Tony Hinchcliffe's controversial comedy set at Madison Square Garden. But it certainly doesn't feel like those topics have been talked about more than the election itself.
Part of it is the fragmentation of culture. It's hard for sports or movies to loom quite as large when last year's World Series posted the event's lowest television viewership ever, or when the current year-to-date box office is down -27% relative to 2019, the last full pre-pandemic year.
Part of it is the "celebrity-fication" of politics. For example, in 1924, McCormick claimed that most people paid more attention to celebrities than politicians... but with Donald Trump, the celebrity is the politician. I'm sure most people in 1924 would have rather discussed some movie star than President Calvin Coolidge, a famously quiet and lackluster personality.
Part of it may also be the relative stakes. Many are calling 2024 the most important election of our lifetimes, but how many were calling the 1924 election the same?
Particularly since the country and world were finally experiencing some level of peace and calm after World War I, it was arguably the least important election in some years. America's entire global reputation didn't quite hinge on the Coolidge versus Davis result, the same way that the Trump versus Harris result does now.
The Election on Main Street: The Scoreboard Excites the Middle West More Than "Predatory Interests" and the Perils of the Movie Heroine Mean More Than Those of the Supreme Court
Published: Sunday, November 2, 1924