Among progressives on a panel presenting plans for a new network called Pivot, Meghan McCain stands out as much as her too-blonde hair.
But McCain, the outspoken daughter of Arizona Senator and occasional presidential candidate, says “I came to Pivot because I think there has to be some kind of middle ground between the Kardashians and C-SPAN. Young people can’t just be given these two options.”
Say what?
“You laugh, but it’s true,” she said on a panel at the TV Critics summer press tour, where some of reporters who see quite a bit other TV than Kardashians and CSPAN chuckled.
“Come on,” she continued. “When I was growing up, MTV News was loud, proud, really inspired my life in a really real way. That doesn’t happen anymore.”
On her new show, “Raising McCain,” she says, “I want to give people information, but not talk down to them. I know what it feels like to have people talk down to you in relationship to politics and American culture and issues that are facing us.
Though she’s had a couple of best selling books (“Dirty Sexy Politics” and, “America, You Sexy Bitch: A Love Letter to Freedom”) and has earned followers as a blogger and tweeter, she says “I’m so excited that I have a show where I can be myself and be crazy and talk about issues that really affect me, in an intelligent way and that doesn’t scare the head of this network.”
That’s not always how she’s been greeted on television, she says. Just as she’s been a self-described “socially liberal Republican,” which has resulted in the fact that “in many ways I have been ostracized from my party, I have been ostracized in the media as well. I am too conservative for MSNBC, and I am too liberal for Fox. Where am I going to go? I’m going to go to Pivot.”
Her resulting show “Raising McCain” is described by its network as “a genre-bending docu-talk series starring and executive produced by the complex and accomplished Meghan McCain with Go Go Luckey Entertainment.” whose other shows include “American Haunting,” “Laguna Beach” and “Hot Girls in Scary Places.”
Though turnout from voters 18-29 years old was 50 percent in 2012, McCain says “we’re the most politically engaged generation.”
It’s “because we have to be because we’ve been given a climate right now that is really fucked up and awful,” McCain says. “We’re living in a time where we have a really fucked up economy, student loans.
“So Millennials have to change it, and I believe in that, and that’s why I’m sitting on this stage.”
“I know I sound preachy and earnest, but literally this network and this show is a dream come true,” says McCain, who says she’s “worked in politics my entire life, since I was in utero.”
And I am just so grateful that I have the platform to show young girls out there — because I never had that — that you can support your gay friends and have a good time and drink and have sex and talk a lot about politics. I never had that growing up. So I’m grateful that I now have a show where I can show little girls in Arizona that it’s possible.”
Before anyone could ask her to elaborate on that educational scene, she was asked how her father would respond to Pivot, a network that blends talk shows like “TakePart Live” with reality shows like “Jersey Strong” and reruns of “Friday Night Lifhts” and “Farscape.”
“He’s already seen the sizzle reel,” McCain says. “My dad has always supportive of the things I do. We have had conflicts, and many times he did not love when I worked at MSNBC. He says I am the happiest I have ever been making this show, and I really believe in it. And that for that reason alone he supports it.
“I mean, I know he is 75 years old, but he does speak to young people on occasion,” she says. And “aside from the fact that his daughter has a show on it,” he would really like it.
Pivot activates Aug. 1 in the spot of the old Documentary Channel.