Role Models

Jeffery M. Berry and Sarah Sobieraj’s The Outrage Industry defines outrage as personality centered, reactive, ideological selectivity, engaging, and marked by internal intertextuality, and further illustrates outrage tactics as an influential characteristic of today’s society. Radio shows, television, social media, and blogs are all venues that are utilized to feed into the creation of outrage as an industry. Berry writes, “outrage today is found in a far greater number of venues, circulates quickly, has vast audiences, and often gathers momentum from the attention of conventional news organizations and the synergistic coordination between media organizations, pundits, bloggers, and politicos,” explaining America’s habitual exposure to outrage (Berry, Sobieaj).

The current Presidential election capitalizes on the use of outrage tactics, due to the strong hatred between the candidates. In the attached clip, outrage is utilized within the underlying message of Donald Trump not being a fit role model for American children. Hillary Clinton holds strong support from family-oriented Americans, based on her perpetual emphasis on protecting children. Therefore, this campaign was strategically made to bash Trump for being an unworthy role model, and simultaneously, makes Hillary Clinton look like the sole candidate capable of maintaining the requirements needed to be President of the United States.

Outrage Politics are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the current political scene, and is even further polarizing the Republicans from the Democrats. In the words of Berry and Sobieaj, outrage works because “it draws on so many of our existing cultural touchstones,” which is visible within this campaign ad from Hillary Clinton through the stress she places on the importance of family and her personification of Trump as an unworthy presidential candidate (Berry, Sobieaj).