People Magazine caught up with a bunch of the 2016 Presidential candidates to find out what their guilty pleasures are, and a couple things jumped out pretty quickly. First of all, politicians, for the most part, apparently have no idea what “guilty pleasure” means, especially when it comes to television. I’m sure this has something to do with living inside the kind of bubble where watching any non-politics program is a guilt-ridden escape, but one of Ted Cruz’s selections was Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad is not a guilty pleasure. True Blood is a guilty pleasure. Scandal is a guilty pleasure. Saying Breaking Bad is your guilty pleasure TV show is kind of like saying that sometimes when you’re down, you like to put on sweats and curl up with a plate of Lobster Thermidor. Get it together, Ted Cruz.
The second thing that jumped out is that Donald Trump is a complete caricature of himself at this point. But we’ll get to that. First, the list.
- Hillary Clinton – Madam Secretary
- Bernie Sanders – Modern Family
- Marco Rubio – The Walking Dead
- Ted Cruz – Criminal Minds, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and Veep
- Jeb Bush – Lilyhammer
- Chris Christie – Football Life
- Mike Huckabee – Bill Maher
- Carly Fiorina – House of Cards
The real shame here is that Hillary moved on from The Good Wife, which she has name-checked as a guilty pleasure in the past, and which is hilarious when you remember that The Good Wife is a show about an ambitious lawyer who is more or less stuck in a politically convenient marriage with a philanderous husband who is trying to use his position as governor as a springboard to the presidency. And I would have given just about anything for Bernie Sanders’ answer to be, like, Empire. (“There are two pressing issues facing this country right now: We must rebuild the middle class and figure out what Anika is up to!”) But as always, no matter how hard you might try to avoid it, the story here is Donald Trump, because, well…
“My guilty pleasure TV show – SNL, starring me. They got great ratings. The best ratings in years. It was a terrific success. I enjoyed doing it. It was 50 percent more than Hillary [Clinton]’s show. That makes me feel good.”
This friggin’ guy.
(Via People)
