THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE C3
When a CNN reporter asked
her how she did afterward, she
reportedly replied: “I’ll tell you
later when I see the memes.”
She proceeded from the debate
to a concert hall bar across the
street, where several dozen sup-
porters were throwing a watch
party. This clearly wasn’t the
online crowd. Many were Detroit
natives who remembered when
Williamson used to pastor at a
suburban megachurch in the ear-
ly 2000s. A couple of minor
celebrities mingled among them.
Frances Fisher — Rose’s mom
from “Titanic” — was on crowd
control duty. The closest thing to
an orb in sight were pink party
balloons.
All the same, Williamson once
again spoke about Trump’s “dark
forces,” and elaborated: “This is
collectivized hatred. It has been
and continues to be one of the
most dangerous forces on the
planet. Now, you can’t fight dog
whistles. You have to drown them
out with angel voices.”
The crowd in the bar ate it up.
Call it ironic, memetic, magical
or political — that’s some kind of
power.
[email protected]Jada Yuan contributed reporting
from Detroit.Power in the Age of Trump,” the
Blondie-bassist-turned-author
Gary Lachman chronicles how a
handful of Internet jokesters co-
alesced in 2015 to make ironic
memes about Donald Trump
somehow winning the presiden-
cy.
As is happening with William-
son, the memes themselves fu-
eled viral fascination with
Trump. The jokesters evolved
into a hyper-loyal online fan
base, many of whom claim they
helped put him in the White
House with “meme magic.”
It is only fitting that Democrat
occultists should have their own
option. “Let’s have a magically
informed candidate on the left
side,” Lachman said. “Why not?”
The magic might be working.
While Williamson still polls in
the 1 percent range, she sat for
interviews this month with Ste-
phen Colbert and actress-activ-
ist-podcaster Alyssa Milano.
Those who mock her now do so at
their own peril: When comedian
Samantha Bee urged Williamson
to drop out of the race on Twitter
last week, outraged Marianne
fans spammed the reply thread
with orbs. And Williamson was
the most searched-for candidate
during Tuesday’s debate, accord-
ing to Google Trends.weekend gig. She had never seen
Williamson speak before the first
debate and came to the Reddit
group several days later. “I’m
100 percent convinced Marianne
is gonna be our next president,”
she wrote on the forum. “No
other Democratic candidate is
utilizing chaos magick principles
like she is.”
Chaos magick is a postmodern
occult belief system that dates to
the 1970s and bears similarities
to the “Course in Miracles” that
Williamson preaches, insofar as
both treat reality as a malleable
thing that can be manipulated
with ritualized thoughts.
The person organizing the oc-
cult task force — who spoke on
the condition of anonymity to
speak more freely about it — said
a group of 13 chaos magicians,
witches and energy workers were
performing synchronized “ges-
tures” to help Williamson get
airtime at Tuesday’s debate and
in the race to follow. “The whole
orb gang community is tapping
into the power of memes to
reflect back on, and multiply, the
sort of pulsing undercurrents of
our collective unconscious,” the
person wrote in an email.
Magical thinking is not wholly
alien to American politics. In
“Dark Star Rising: Magick andWhat makes sense to Thornton
— a Catholic-raised atheist with
no particular spiritual yearnings
— are Williamson’s policies,
which Thornton went to her
website to look up after watching
the first debate. While her Demo-
cratic rivals are desperately try-
ing to stake out memorable pol-
icy positions, Williamson has
soul-exploded beyond the con-
fines of conventional govern-
ment. In addition to universal
health coverage and an ambi-
tious climate plan, she espouses a
Department of Peace and an
overhaul of the criminal justice
system that would involve releas-
ing prisoners en masse. In Tues-
day’s debate, she argued passion-
ately for reparations of $200 bil-
lion to $500 billion to African
Americans.
“A lot of people believe she’s,
like, super-healing-chakra, and
way out there, but a lot of that’s
overblown,” Thornton said.
“She’s not the corner tarot reader
lady people hear about.”
But the tarot ladies have heard
of her — as have various styles of
mystics and magicians who have
begun to frequent the Reddit
group.
Victoria Santapau, 31, reads
tarot cards for customers in a
park near Asheville, N.C., as aand only love can cast that out.
I’m going to harness love for
political purposes. I will meet you
on that field, and sir, love will
win.”
Williamson has harnessed
something from the body politic,
whether love is the best term for
it. Obsession might better de-
scribe her online community of
devotees. Informally known as
the “orb gang,” they celebrate
Williamson’s mystical utterances
with various levels of irony and
earnestness — and a passion
some of her rival Democrats
might envy.
Long before she entered poli-
tics, Los Angeles-based William-
son attained celebrity as an
Oprah-proximate spiritualist,
churning out best-selling books
such as “The Law of Divine
Compensation,” “Illuminata” and
“A Course in Weight Loss: 21
Spiritual Lessons for Surrender-
ing Your Weight Forever.” Her
sprawling philosophy touches on
God, quantum physics and the
quasi-mystical power of thought
to affect the nature of reality. Her
Twitter feed includes aphorisms
such as: “It’s only when we soul-
explode beyond the confines of
the mortal self, expanding the
boundaries of what we think is
real, that we begin to glimpse the
truth of who we are and why
we’re here.”
Virgil Texas, a co-host of the
political comedy podcast “Chapo
Trap House,” effectively estab-
lished Williamson’s ironic fan
club in April, when he invited his
listeners to “pierce the veil of
reality and observe the realm
beyond, full of shimmering orbs.”
By the time of the first debates in
June, the Reddit discussion
group r/Marianne2020 was a
running stream of orb emoji and
fan art depicting Williamson
shooting lasers out of her eyes, or
banishing Trump “to Naraka
realm until he can learn love and
acceptance.”
This might have started out as
mockery, but as the Reddit group
gained thousands of subscribers
in the days after the first debate,
it evolved into something harder
to pin down. Williamson em-
braced the joke at her expense,
going so far as to post a picture of
herself as a fantasy anime charac-
ter this month. And many on the
Reddit group declared they had
unexpectedly become “non-iron-
ic” supporters of her candidacy.
“The common story is I came
here ironically; it’s almost a
meme in and of itself,” said Simon
Thornton, a 22-year-old baker
and cosmetology student in
Reno, Nev., who joined the sub-
reddit last month and now volun-
teers for the campaign. “I think
that’s how she’s going to build her
base: Have these fun, mocky
memes. Then they get there and
see this makes sense.”
WILLIAMSON FROM C1
doesn’t serve the public very
well, but also cheats the
candidates.
“Well-managed debates play a
role in informing the public but
they also should honor
candidates stepping up and into
the arena,” Zimon said.
The current, too-predictable
setup tends to “shroud the
authenticity of a candidate,” she
said. Do we really get to know
who these people are?
The way questions are framed
can do that, too, as pollster Matt
McDermott noted on Twitter.
“CNN debate summarized:
Why does your health care plan
screw the middle class? Why are
you taking health care from
hard working Americans? Why
are you for open borders?” he
wrote. “Imagine CNN asking in
a Republican debate:
‘Democrats want to ensure
health care for all Americans.
You want to kill people. Care to
respond?’ ”
Like others who would like to
reform debates, Zimon calls for
more innovative use of
technology during the debates
to deepen the conversation, for
questions sourced by voters, and
for less restrictive use of time
limits.
The networks, and the DNC,
should pay heed.
The debates aren’t completely
pointless, of course. Even in
their current format, they give
the public a look at the wide
field of candidates and their
ideas.
But they should be so much
better. This moment in history
demands it.
[email protected]For more by Margaret Sullivan visit
wapo.st/sullivan.questions from viewers or
voters, but they amount to little
more than pallid gestures before
returning to the main event: the
prizefight.
“As it was in 1960, the viewers
[are] on one side of the
mediated wall and the
candidates on the other,” wrote
Christine Cupaiuolo, who led
the Rethinking Debates project
for the nonprofit Civic Hall, in a
2016 report.
Jill Miller Zimon, project
director of the Ohio Debate
Commission (one of four
statewide debate commissions
in the country), told me the
current debate format not onlywhatever journalists can do to
“act less as gatekeepers and
more as conduits for the public’s
agenda, the better,” said Jennifer
Brandel, CEO and co-founder of
Hearken, which consults with
newsrooms about better
listening and responding to the
public.
In the digital age, technology
can help in bringing in voters’
voices, allowing for live
audience feedback and other
innovations.
But other than tech’s role in
the overdone setting and intro
video, it’s not much more of a
factor than it was decades ago.
There are some nods toopening statements, allowing
more time for substantive
answers to questions, and to
responses to the other
candidates. Topics and
questions sourced entirely from
voters, which could be gathered
in advance. Comparison
graphics about candidates’
positions offered in real time.
Less conflict-oriented framing
in coverage of the debates with
phrases that evoke
prizefighting: marquee
matchups, winners and losers,
and explosive faceoffs.
“Political journalism needs to
collapse the distance between
politicians and the public,” sonine 53-foot semi-trucks.
In one way, CNN’s efforts
were an improvement from
NBC’s first round of debates a
couple of weeks ago — at least
there was no absurd demand for
a show of hands on complex
policy proposals.
But there was a major flaw:
CNN’s moderators, like the
strictest of schoolmasters,
allowed almost no actual
debating as they enforced the
time limitations. That ridiculous
rule needs immediate reform.
As I wrote after last month’s
NBC debate, the best decision
their moderators made last
month was to allow former vice
president Joe Biden and Sen.
Kamala Harris the airtime for a
substantive back-and-forth on
race-related issues.
With 10 candidates onstage
each night, time limits are
bound to be a challenge — and
yet, such strict enforcement is
completely counterproductive
for meaningful exchanges.
To break through the noise,
the candidate either had to be:
(1) spiritual author Marianne
Williamson with her planetary
(though undeniably correct)
pronouncements about the
“dark psychic force of...
collectivized hatred” unleashed
by President Trump; (2) former
Maryland congressman John
Delaney, apparently intended to
represent all things Sensibly
Centrist — and therefore given
far more time than he deserved.
There’s got to be a better way.
I asked a few experts for
suggestions to bring the debates
closer to something that serves
engaged citizens seeking
information.
Among their suggestions: No
SULLIVAN FROM C1
MARGARET SULLIVAN
CNN’s reality-show atmosphere doesn’t serve the public or the candidates
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
From left, Dana Bash, Don Lemon and Jake Tapper and the candidates on CNN’s elaborate stage for
the playing of the national anthem.For some, Williamson is their 2020 ‘orb queen’
ALEX WELSH FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
People watch as Marianne Williamson announces her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination in Beverly Hills in January.
She has garnered the attention of meme-makers and Reddit discussion groups with her mystical utterances.their contracts after the move to
Merriweather, according to
Lang, who said the artists (and
their agents) had all been fully
paid. He cited the new location
as part of the reason so many
headliners dropped out this
past week, and urged the acts to
donate a portion of their fees to
HeadCount, a nonprofit that
works with musicians to pro-
mote voter registration. After
the relocation to Maryland, or-
ganizers intended to turn
Woodstock 50 into a free con-
cert benefiting HeadCount and
some organizations working to
combat climate change — a
stark contrast with onetime
plans to sell three-day passes
for $450.
Tickets were never made
available after the on-sale date
was indefinitely delayed in
April, the same month a falling-
out with the festival’s financial
backer, Dentsu Aegis Network,
led to confusion over whether it
was still happening. (Dentsu
announced that it wasn’t; orga-
nizers quickly clarified that it
was.) The festival secured a new
backer in May, but issues per-
sisted.
I.M.P., which operates Merri-
weather, announced last week
that it was in talks to host
Woodstock 50. But Seth Hur-
witz, the company’s chairman,
said as recently as Monday that
he hadn’t yet heard who would
play. Nonetheless, he said, the
festival would “have a venue if
they have a show.” (Audrey FixSchaefer, an I.M.P. spokeswom-
an, confirmed that the Smash-
ing Pumpkins and Noel Gal-
lagher’s High Flying Birds con-
cert set for Aug. 17 would
proceed as planned.)
A similar situation occurred
with Howard County officials,
who confirmed Tuesday that
organizers hadn’t requested a
permit from the local police
department. Standard pro-
cedure calls for special-event
permit applications to be sub-
mitted at least 60 days before
the event, police spokeswoman
Lori Boone said, but officials
had been looking into making
accommodations for Wood-
stock 50.
“Initially, when this festival
was in search of a new home, we
saw an opportunity to bring a
piece of American history to
our storied stage,” Howard
County Executive Calvin Ball
said in a statement Wednesday.
“Howard County is used to
hosting big concerts, from Vir-
gin FreeFest to Sweetlife to
Jazzfest and more. We had the
experience, the infrastructure,
and the passion to make this
happen. Howard County and
Merriweather were fully pre-
pared to put on a world-class
concert, if the festival promot-
ers could secure the acts.”
While Woodstock 50 is no
longer happening, a separate,
more intimate gathering is set
to take place in Bethel, N.Y.,
from Aug. 15 through Aug. 18,
the dates of the original festi-
val. A few artists who per-
formed in 1969 had previously
planned to appear at both
Woodstock 50 and the smaller
celebration, including Santana
and John Fogerty, the former
frontman of Creedence Clear-
water Revival. The Bethel event
will also feature Ringo Starr
and the Doobie Brothers.
“We thank the artists, fans
and partners who stood by us
even in the face of adversity,”
Lang said. “My thoughts turn to
Bethel and its celebration of
our 50th Anniversary to rein-
force the values of compassion,
human dignity, and the beauty
of our differences embraced by
Woodstock.”
[email protected]WOODSTOCK FROM C1Woodstock
50 festival
is officially
canceled
“We thank the
artists, fans and
partners who
stood by us even
in the face of
adversity.”
Michael Lang, Woodstock 50
organizer and co-founder of the 1969
festival, said of the canceled event