Politics as theatre. Celebrity as currency. Wellness as religion. And power as the only real language in the room. Subscribe to PRIMAL SCREAM with Joanna Coles on Substack for exclusive news, reviews and commentary.
It’s funny what you remember about a White House state dinner. I went to one Barack and Michelle Obama hosted for then-French President François Hollande in February 2014. The guest list was a snapshot of who mattered in America at the time. Hollywood was well represented; media mattered too: Jill Abramson, then executive editor of “The Gray Lady,” showed up in navy blue; instead of being banned from the premises, Jeff Zucker, then president of CNN Worldwide, was a welcome guest. And, almost incidentally, the 42-year-old entrepreneur Elon Musk attended with his beautiful actress wife, Talulah. Twelve years later, compare that evening with Trump’s state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping and you can see how completely American power and celebrity has been reordered: we have become intoxicated by scale, disruption and staggering personal wealth. The tech world didn’t merely attend—it swallowed the room. And yes, Musk was at both dinners. The difference is that, in 2014, he wasn’t more powerful than the man who was throwing the party. Click through to read more of my first-hand take on the tech takeover.
