Liberal media analysts and political observers have mocked conservative neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson’s lack of social-media savvy for announcing his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination in an exclusive interview with an imaginary radio station that no longer exists.
“I’m like, oh my god,” said Deline Snarck, digital emerging alternative social media commentator for Slate.com, from her parents’ basement in New York. “Ben Carson like totally doesn’t get that we’re living in — hello — the 20th century now! WKRP in Cincinnati is like, a radio station! What’s up with that?”
“Who listens to the radio — or is it the ‘wireless’, ha, ha, except it actually has wires! — any more? Except country music fans? It’s so … passive. If I have to ‘listen’ to anything — unlikely! — I have an app which re-codes trending Twitter feeds into digitally synthesized digitized high-bandwidth audio stream, kind of like Siri but it’s the voice of Morgan Freeman.”
The socially emerging digital new media emerging trends sub-editor of Salon.com, Dory Pylon, said of WKRP: “It’s not even a real radio station. WTF! It was a fictional 1970s creation of white male studio executives straight of a bad subplot of ‘Mad Men’ which perpetuated racist stereotypes with a token black DJ who dresses like a pimp and talks jive. Sexist stereotypes, with a large, juicy-breasted secretary who was nothing more than an eye candy Barbie doll. And patrionormacy, with white men in bad suits doing the work while their wives stayed at home cooking, cleaning and having babies. Hell-ooo-oh Mr. Carson. Why not just get a time machine and announce your candidacy in a walk-on cameo role in an episode of ‘Leave It to Freakin’ Beaver?’”
The Huffington Post’s alternative new emerging digital social media editor, Semnio Tallis, speaking from her pod in a Tokyo sleep hotel from where she pens her weekly column for the website on an Apple Watch, said that WKRP had “ended a gazillion years ago, and millennials don’t even know it ever existed, so in a sort of postmodern way that kind of means that it didn’t, so maybe Dr. Carson’s announcement didn’t actually happen except in a parallel universe where the Nazis won World War Two and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was actually a Manhattan Penthouse.”
A spokesman for Carson said that the announcement had actually been made on a Cincinnati television station, WKRC, and apologized for any confusion caused. However, negative reaction to Carson’s candidacy continued, including a comment thread on Reddit accusing him of only becoming a doctor so he could wear a white robe and a hood.