Spencer Pratt: Hollywood troll

Spencer Pratt first appeared on reality television in 2005, when the precocious 20-year-old executive producer stepped out from behind the cameras of The Princes of Malibu to become a permanent house guest at the Malibu mansion owned by the grey-haired music producer David Foster (and stepfather of the eponymous “princes”) — thereby enraging the show’s old-guard authority figure. It quickly became clear that the young upstart was quite literally running the show.

A few years later, Pratt found himself in front of the cameras again, this time for MTV’s docu-soap, The Hills . He eloped to Cabo San Lucas with his inamorata, the rat-tail and scorpion ingesting Heidi Montag, she of the 10 cosmetic surgeries, who was soon to grace the cover of Playboy magazine. In 2009, Pratt shifted gears to music, cutting an album and proclaiming he was the “White Jay-Z”. The following year he was arrested in Costa Rica for boarding an airplane with weapons. In Los Angeles, this is the resume — sordid sex-tape scandals and all — that qualifies Spencer Pratt to run for mayor.

The comedians aren’t amused. Late-night Trumpo-phobe Jimmy Kimmel derided him as a crystal-hawking huckster. Drew Carey, the man-of-the-people game-show host, condemned him as a “serial scammer” . Chelsea Handler took a moment off from smutty anecdotes to ask on Instagram: “ Have we learned anything yet?” They were among the Hollywood liberals who have ridiculed and demonised Pratt as a showboat, a loudmouth, a clown, and a troll. And yet — to reduce the overriding frustrations of our piteous political moment to three words — no one cares .

The latest UC Berkeley- Los Angeles Times poll has Pratt at 22%, only four percentage points behind incumbent Karen Bass and three behind activist city council member Nithya Raman. The latest from the California Post placed Pratt at 30.1% and the incumbent at 29.5% — a statistical tie. Of course, it doesn’t really matter who wins today’s non-partisan primary (Pratt is a registered Republican), as it has become clear that Bass will not swing enough votes to gather a majority, thus guaranteeing a run-off in November.

The point here is not to decry the degraded state of American politics. Railing against reality television politics is so twenty-teen. These days, not a single eyebrow raises when plaid-flannelled Luke Gulbranson — known for his clueless romantic pursuits on Bravo’s Summer House — runs for a Congressional seat in Minnesota, or when “Teen Mom” Farrah Abraham seeks a spot on Austin’s City Council. Just look at the guy with the nuclear codes.

It’s hardly a revelation that politics has gone Hollywood. The interesting point here is that the liberal Hollywood elite, the longstanding behemoth of left-coast, Left-wing electioneering, has been powerless to stop it. The rattling last gasp of LA’s political establishment came in 2024, when Oprah and Julia Louis-Dreyfus led the cavalry for Kamala Harris, whooping and waving proverbial swords over their heads so that George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Jamie Lee Curtis would know which way to charge — to no avail.

Pratt delivers a new brand of politics — call it alt-Hollywood, as his coalition includes none of the previous power brokers of Tinseltown’s establishment. Of course he has his billionaire, the hedge-fund tycoon Daniel Loeb, who once purchased a massive stake in Sony Pictures. And he can boast a bona-fide Academy-Award winner in Brian Grazer, a longstanding backer of California Democrats (including Kamala). Then come the West Coast MAGAs one might expect: Dennis Quaid and James Woods. But from there on out, his industry backers look different from anything we have seen in the past. He has energised hordes of Hollywood himbos and bimbos, awakening the political consciousness of actresses/models like Amber Rose and Paris Hilton, fellow reality stars Brody Jenner and Kristin Cavallari, Real Housewife of Miami ‘s Joanna Krupa, and Dancing with the Stars’  Audrina Patridge. Pratt’s long tail reaches far into the D-List, from Billy Bush to Bachelorette runner-up Nick Viall to the perpetually online blabberati of comedians, DJs and former UFC fighters .

In a viral video of the fundraiser held at the Brentwood home of Pratt’s erstwhile foil on Princes of Malibu , David Foster’s wife Katharine McPhee belted out a version of “Simply the Best” — with new (and cringe) lyrics featuring Pratt. “La la land is ready for a plot twist,” concluded Access Hollywood .

In Hollywood, as in Aristotle’s Poetics , a plot twist is generally accompanied by what is technically known as a “recognition” — a perception that what was once is no more, a new awareness that changes everything. The recognition that may well define Pratt’s political future is the Hollywood liberal’s reversal of fortune. This became evident on Fox News ‘s hard-Right comedy hour Gutfeld ! . “He’s on a mission to defeat the coastal elite,” declared the arch-conservative stalwart and eponymous host, Greg Gutfe…