This article is part of The Poynter 50, a series reflecting on 50 moments and people that shaped journalism over the past half-century — and continue to influence its future. As Poynter celebrates its 50th anniversary, we examine how the media landscape has evolved and what it means for the next era of news.
Arsenio Hall made his entrance as host and glanced quickly to his left. What — or rather who — he saw on stage delighted him.
The camera switched to a shot of a suited Bill Clinton. His eyes hidden behind sunglasses, the presidential candidate pressed his lips to the mouthpiece of a saxophone. His fingers worked the keys to Elvis’ “Heartbreak Hotel.”
The audience cheered and stood as Clinton got into a groove. Hall laughed and clapped along with them. When he was done, Hall stuck out his left arm and gestured at Clinton, who high-fived one of the band members of “The Arsenio Hall Show.”
It was a moment in which politics crashed into pop culture — one that became political legend, reshaped campaigning and even made it into the “Animaniacs” theme song. Many would later call it a turning point in political communication. On June 3, 1992, Clinton bypassed traditional journalism, adjusted the neck strap of his sax and jammed out on late-night television. Many saw it as a play toward the youth vote. Clinton, then the governor of Arkansas, was running against the incumbent President George H.W. Bush.
Some critics said it wasn’t presidential. CNN’s John King said it was risky to step outside of traditional news programs. “Good politicians take a risk,” King told Hall years later on “Piers Morgan Tonight.” “And Clinton took one.”
Hall later reflected on the moment during an appearance on comedian Howie Mandel’s podcast. Years after the performance, Hall said Clinton invited him to a soccer game. During the match, Hall said the former president turned to him.
“‘You know I’m president because of you, right?’” Hall said in his best Arkansas-based Southern drawl. “‘Without you, I don’t win that election.’”
Phil Edwards, a video producer formerly of Vox and self-described political junkie, revisited the moment a few years ago for his YouTube channel.
“I went into it assuming that it was an entirely kind of inauthentic moment, or a moment that was just manufactured to play to the youth vote, because that’s how you always see it covered. And I still do think that that’s true; that’s why he went on Arsenio to do it instead of on another talk show at the time,” Edwards said. But, he added, “I also came out of it thinking that he just really liked the saxophone, which is interesting to me because it’s kind of a harbinger of some of the authentic political moments that we would get later on, and that so many politicians are being pushed to have today.”
Edwards sees ripples of the moment in modern campaigns. The 2024 presidential election, sometimes called the first “podcast election,” saw both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris appear on culturally vital media shows outside of traditional journalism.
“Whether it’s like candidate Harris on ‘Call Her Daddy’ or President Trump on just a billion different podcasts, they’re trying to widen the aperture of what was acceptable for a candidate, and what a candidate could do. And then here Bill Clinton’s doing it back in the 90s.”
Before digging into the moment, Edwards said he would have easily marked it as a celebrification of politics. Looking back, he sees something more complicated.
“You even don’t see it that much today, or as much as you would think that you would, of a politician channeling some real part of themselves and their political experience,” Edwards said. “It’s oddly rare. Maybe it’s because these politicians are too busy to have hobbies like this or have secondary interests.”
Kristin Shockley, a senior instructor at Florida Atlantic University, said the Clinton-Hall moment didn’t come out of nowhere.
Warren G. Harding was among the first modern presidents to receive a celebrity endorsement, she said, with support from singer and comedian Al Jolson, who composed and wrote his campaign song. And Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Fireside Chats” established what scholars call the rhetorical presidency, or the idea of a U.S. president bypassing Congress and appealing directly to the public.
“And this is the idea that one of the biggest sources of power for a president in the 20th and 21st centuries is their ability to go to the people and to get public opinion behind them,” Shockley said. “Prior to this, it was very much negotiating with other elites in Washington, negotiating within political parties.”
As technology expanded from radio to the internet, Shockley said, so did the relationship between a president and the public. The televised 1960 John F. Kennedy-Richard Nixon debate — when Kennedy appeared good-looking and confident and Nixon came off as sweaty — is another notable moment. Many say it cost Nixon the presidency.
In this Oct. 21, 1960 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John F. Kennedy, center left, and Republican candidate, Vice President Richard Nixon, stand in a television studio during their presidential debate in New York. Polls found those who listened on radio awarded Nixon the debate victory. Those watching on TV gave Kennedy the nod. (AP Photo)
Pop culture, Shockley said, has increasingly become both a mode of political communication and the source of political information.
“They’re going to spend more time on entertainment, and so we have to actually take seriously that, generally speaking, pop culture is important for political information and for political communication,” she said.
Shockley questions whether such moments are genuine outreach or something more calculated.
“Are they doing it as a tool of what I call ‘elite manipulation’?” she said. “Are they doing it to be like, ‘Hey, I’m on ‘The Tonight Show.’ Or, ‘Hey, look at me. I’m cool. I’m playing the saxophone. I’m on ‘The Arsenio Hall Show.’” And the question is, do they think the average public is an idiot? Are we a bunch of dupes?”
YouTuber Phil Edwards said the interweaving of pop culture and politics could be taken two ways. On one hand, he said, the audience got a sense of who Bill Clinton was via a somewhat authentic moment.
But Edwards said it can come at the expense of substance. He rewatched the whole Clinton-Hall interview and said, while there were some substantive questions, it was not an in-depth policy discussion. He believes this problem has only grown with today’s “super soft” podcast interviews.
“They never ask a hard question. And so you get a sense of the authentic person, of what it would be like to hang out with them, but you don’t necessarily get a sense of what it would be like to be governed by them. And I think that we lose something when we don’t have that anymore.”
Clinton himself later revisited the moment on “The Queen Latifah Show.”
“I remember seeing that and thinking, ‘I’m voting for that guy. I gotta vote for that guy,’” Queen Latifah told Clinton, drawing laughter and applause from her live studio audience. “That was unbelievable.”
Clinton said the appearance was partly an attempt to cut through the cynicism surrounding politics in the early 1990s.
“I wanted the voters to think – whether they voted for me or not — that it was possible to be like them, to be tuned into them, to care about them. And so I just took a flying leap and tried it. And I liked it.”
