I have a lot of thoughts about Claudia Conway on “American Idol”
There is something so deeply and disturbingly all-encompassing about Claudia Conway on last night’s premiere of American Idol, the Rasputin of talent shows in that it was once popular predictor of success but now just won’t die, that has convinced me the Conways have surpassed the Kennedys and the Kardashians as a quintessential American family. Whether Claudia made it to Hollywood or not, she and her family have entirely embodied what it means to be American in this, the year of our Yeezy, 2021.
There has already been one reported case of a teen just learning about the pandemic because he’d been in a coma for 10 months , so in case that specific teen is reading this, here’s what you need to know about Claudia Conway: Claudia is the 16-year-old spawn of political strategists Kellyanne Conway (who you may know from her greatest hits such as the Bowling Green Massacre and Alternative Facts) and George Conway, a well known ‘Never Trump’er and founder of The Lincoln Project.
Already we have a lot to unpack, and though at this point we may already be tempted to throw the whole suitcase away, I urge you to bear with me. The political turmoil and desecration of truth that occurs in this household and marriage is, undoubtedly, the first exhibit of our entire experience as Americans. Somewhere within the creation of the two-party system, we yolked ourselves and our very identities to our political party, allowing the leaders in that party (or, in George’s case, past leaders) to define our values more than our personal conscience and using party allegiance as an excuse for our behaviors and actions.
This is fundamentally true whether you identify as a Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Leftist. The party line speaks for you, and any deviation from that party results in an overwhelming panic attack brought on by cognitive dissonance and an uncertain sense of self. This is also why any potential shifting of party values brought forth by a newer, younger generation of voters incites doomsday panic in the older generation who venerate the old guard.
Also, you’re not allowed to be independent anymore because that’s now become code for “spineless”, so fuck you, apparently.
In some ways, this is unavoidable and not distinctly American. Policy makers are after your money and want to put that money where they deem most useful for society. This more often than not affects facets of your personal identity, which means that anyone who doesn’t value your identity markers in the same way you do and in the same order that you do (and who doesn’t want to pay for the groups with which you identify to benefit to the same degree that you do) must be a selfish degenerate. (We obviously fail to consider why our personal identity markers matter more than the other guy’s in this equation.)
But what is distinctly American is how much vitriol and brazen blindness we have brought to the realm of politics. In our quest to affirm our identity and values, we have willingly ignored that politicians — all of them, from Reagan to AOC — are simply socially acceptable conmen. They sell you on the exact same idea that conmen do — that you are a good, smart person who makes wise choices. They then spend their entire campaign framing themselves as the choice that affirms that notion. And if they’re effective, they convince you that voting for their opposition means that you are a dumbass devoid of a moral code.
Anyone who scrolls through Twitter for more than two seconds can understand that our politicians (both nationally and globally) have become extremely effective as evidenced by the fact that our political discourse has become extremely stupid. The more ad-hominem insults and Stan culture we have surrounding our political leaders, the less room there is to examine the successes or failures of their actual policies. In vilifying flexible thinking and consideration for the opposition, they have trained us to be rigid guard dogs rather than independent critics who they ultimately serve. It’s actually admirable on part of the Hill, in an Orwellian/Bond Villain sort of way.
All of this is to say that having a Trump staffer and Never Trump-er in the same household bound by marriage then means that they fucking hate each other’s guts in a specific way only Americans can. This is well-documented both by news outlets who can’t help themselves and by Claudia herself.
Which brings me to the rise of our star.
Claudia, a 16-year-old Greek tragedy, is genetically cursed to bear witness to an amplified microcosm of the Civil War we’ve been threatening to invoke for the last 4+ years. She cannot escape it within the confines of her own household. So like any teen who has grown up on a gluttonous diet of Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and social media addiction, she documented it on TikTok, loudly voiced her opposition to the crazy, and quickly rose to internet fame.
This makes plenty of sense and is in a lot of ways aligned with the grotesque warping of the modern American Dream. She has the origin story — the difficult upbringing (probably not financially, but certainly emotionally) — and she is using it to “make something of herself” by today’s standards. As a culture, we quantify success in terms of follow count, so Claudia’s positioning of herself as a moral compass untouched by the chaos in her family home brings her the self-righteous fame that Gen Z has been trained (by Millennials, mostly) to covet.
As audience members we are wholly responsible for this. People rabidly ate up the Claudia Conway TikTok exposés. It’s possible that in some other universe where American politics was a little more even-keeled, we may not have paid as much attention to the Conway files. But in our current America where we’ve trained ourselves to not merely consume but to actively seek news about The Other Side that confirms our suspicion they’re soulless gremlins, this was gold.
To adults who had the audacity to call themselves reporters, Claudia was basically doing the legwork for them, a fact in which they gleefully indulged to the point where George and Kellyanne had to do a shockingly decent parenting thing and remind them not to contact her because she’s a minor. And anyone who had #Resistance in their Twitter bio also tended to equate Claudia with a Katniss Everdeen, waiting on her to be a whistleblower in her own household and bring down the Trump administration. This was a reaction that was both fucking weird and totally irresponsible. By immediately elevating Claudia to the status of revolutionary, we have entirely erased her humanity and dismissed the fact that she is a minor going through extreme family strain in her formative years, which will undoubtedly severely impact her mental health.
But this, again, is nothing new. American entertainment has for years run on the exploitation of children, relegating them to concepts to be used and discarded rather than people who need guidance, support, and — in this case, especially — therapy. The scandals that followed Claudia shortly thereafter — the several breaks she needs to take from social media, the public rifts and verbal abuse she’s recorded and shared, a case of Corona and a nudes leak — were all taken and consumed by the public as another phase in the Pokemon evolution of a Hollywood-adjacent star. We’ve drugged her with our attention, sexualized her, scorned her, and venerated her. In one breath we atone for the sins we committed against Britney Spears 10 years ago and in the next we advertise Claudia’s American Idol audition.
Speaking of the welfare of children in relation to modern American culture, I would be remiss not to note that race plays a huge factor in the way Claudia and her family are being received. The fact that it took an accidental (?) topless photo leak for DCF to get involved with the Conways despite the countless times Claudia has alleged abuse to her massive following is solely a function of their race (with a secondary factor being her assumed wealth). Statistically speaking, were the Conways a Black or Hispanic family rather than a White family, this would have escalated to a legal matter a hell of a lot sooner, and likely would have resulted in the fracture of her family with her forced removal. We have been conditioned culturally to view White parents as more capable or reliable in raising their children, trusting them even in the face of recorded disputes, while we would view the same parenting as dangerous and unsafe if it was done by a BIPOC. What would be a damning stack of evidence to a BIPOC family is simply classic dysfunctionality for a White one and, therefore, viable and consumable entertainment for the masses.
In the weeks leading up to Claudia’s American Idol audition, ABC advertised her appearance heavily to build viewership. Never one to miss an opportunity, both of Claudia’s parents used the opportunity to appear and attempt to rehabilitate their image as decent people and loving parents, which the network wholeheartedly leaned into. Prior to the premiere of the episode, Claudia warned her followers that she wasn’t happy with her audition because, as we all know, we never allow our teen idols to misstep or fail.
Claudia appeared in an outfit akin to what we expect underaged pop stars to wear — leather pants and a bandana or scarf or something that’s supposed to be acting as a top. You know, something that will sexualize them but is clearly uncomfortable for them to appear in, as evidenced by the fact that Claudia had to take off her six-inch heels in the middle of her performance. She sang, and wasn’t terrible but was clearly young and undeveloped in her talent, as the judges pointed out. And Katy Perry, the nurturing figure of the panel, took on the awkward role of asking Claudia delicately to invoke her difficult childhood to bring emotion into her second song selection, “When We Were Young” by Adele.
Honestly, I have no idea if Claudia made it to Hollywood (though I would assume so.) I didn’t watch the ending of the audition. Instead, I sat down and took two and a half hours to write this thinkpiece. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if she made it or not, if she was able to pivot her frequency to go viral into something adjacent to fame or not. Claudia Conway has already solidified herself as a part of America culture. She already is an American Idol.
It’s just too bad we treat our idols like shit.
