DONALD TRUMP, THE QVC PRESIDENT.

• Date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Waldman, Amy

In late 1994, when I began working at the Washington Monthly, my new boss, Charlie Peters, asked that I write a piece on home shopping channels and how they preyed on lonely, mostly female consumers. On the one hand, it was a strange assignment for me, given that I had just returned from two and a half years in South Africa. Those were largely pre-internet days, so among the many aspects of America from which I'd been exiled was its consumer culture. And now, working eighty-hour weeks at the Monthly, I wasn't watching much TV. On the other hand, Charlie clearly thought it was a natural fit for one of the magazine's few female editors to date. Part of me knew and resented that. But as soon as I started tuning in, I could see that he was on to something.

Both the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and its rival QVC had started in the 1980s, a decade in which culture, along with politics, seemed to re-form around the rich. Inequality was rising. So was class consciousness. But the ethos of the era was that the rich were to be venerated...