Keeping Up With the Kardashians

Monday

Cockburn

How the Trump-Kardashian team-up came to an end

Kim Kardashian was once cozy with the Trump White House. Together, the former president and the celebrity entrepreneur spearheaded criminal justice reform, providing the Kardashian with the political experience she desired and giving Trump one of the PR stunts he lives for. But the snuggling ended when Trump found out that Kim wasn’t all in with Team Trump, as she expressed her support for Joe Biden, hitting Trump where it hurts him most — loyalty. Jonathan Karl takes us behind the scenes of this spat in his new book Tired of Winning. According to the ABC News personality, when Kim called Trump for help with a clemency case, Trump hung up on her. According to an excerpt obtained by Axios, at the end of the Trump presidency, Kim attempted to get Trump to commute more sentences.

donald trump kim kardashian

Tuesday

Teresa Mull

What’s with the pro-pregnancy tabloid trend?

The “Femail Today” section of the Daily Mail often features such can’t-miss content as Doja Cat “flashing her bare bust beneath fishnet body stocking in VERY racy shoot” and Emily Ratajkowski’s every move. Lately, though, there’s been a shift in the Mail’s focus: pregnant women are everywhere! Femail last week, for instance, featured as many women with child — Lindsay Lohan, Rihanna and Serena Williams — in its top stories as women without. Kourtney Kardashian is regularly pictured “showing off” her growing baby bump (today it was in a TINY string bikini). When Lohan gave birth this week, the Mail lauded the occasion and reported how Lohan and her husband are “‘in love’ with their new addition.

lindsay lohan pregnant pregnancy

Tuesday

Cockburn

Kim Kardashian realizes the American Dream

Kim Kardashian’s behind is on the front page once again. This time, it’s being accused of disrespecting the great people of America. The forty-one-year-old and her bare buttocks grace the cover of Interview magazine's September edition, the "American Dream" special. https://twitter.com/kimkardashian/status/1567135904183250944 Cockburn must admit that the bleached eyebrows are lost on him. But he wonders how warranted the other criticisms of Kardashian are. Some people online were eager to compare Kim’s look to that of male make-up artist Jeffree Star. Journalist Piers Morgan quoted her tweet of the cover, saying, "You think the American Dream is about baring your ass in front of the flag?" (Nice American English, Piers!).

kim kardashian

Monday

Christopher J. Scalia

Reality bit

If a single television genre defines the twenty-first century so far, it is the reality show. These relatively low-budget and therefore lucrative unscripted programs often feature people competing to survive in the most hostile environments imaginable — and those are just the series about the Kardashian family. Many such shows are lowbrow entertainment at its most bingeable, the visual equivalents of a bag of potato chips: “I can’t believe I watched the whole thing.” Danielle J. Lindemann, a sociology professor at Lehigh University and an avid reality television fan, would probably agree with at least some of that description, but she would add that these shows are also quite instructive.

reality

Sunday

Caroline Frost

It’s time we gave the Kardashians some credit

As the Kardashians announced the retirement of their TV show after 14 years and 20 seasons, there was the usual roster of commentators lining up to disparage them. Leading the parade was Piers Morgan who dismissed them as ‘vacuous, talentless, globally renowned imbeciles, the most shameless, grasping family in America.’ But their detractors shouldn’t be too hasty with their disdain. Shameless self-promoters they may well be but the Kardashians have influenced culture more than we realize. ‘We never set out to be celebrities,’ wrote Kim, Khloe and Kourtney with impressively straight faces in their joint autobiography Kardashian Konfidential.

kardashians