The Boston Globe’s Trump parody: brilliant satire, self-indulgent clickbait—or both?
WGBH - 04/11/2016
So what are we to make of the Boston Globe’s parody of a possible Donald Trump presidency? Is it inspired or sophomoric? A responsible exercise of a newspaper’s role in shaping public opinion or self-indulgent clickbait? And does the form that it takes—the entire front of the Sunday Ideas section, designed to look like page one of the Globe—deceive readers and thus undermine public trust in the paper?
I’m posing these questions because as I write this on late Sunday afternoon, a day after the Globe’s anti-Trump package was unveiled, I’m still not sure what to make of it. Not to wimp out, but I think both the defenders and the detractors have good arguments.