Audience crushing on MSNBC’s election wonk
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/11/2020 (1465 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Many of us had some frustrating and difficult days last week, as we followed an American election that just kept stretching on and on and on. The pundits were getting repetitive, the analysis was stalled out, and what the heck was taking Nevada so long?
But there was one bright spot for our weary hearts and sore eyes, and that was Steve Kornacki on MSNBC.
Manning the touch-screen big board, bringing in the maps and graphs and charts and breaking it all down, Kornacki was a landslide winner.
In that interminable trudge of election coverage, the 41-year-old journo was tirelessly and irresistibly upbeat, with his gee-willikers love for data and his unchanging khaki pants. A super-keen math nerd with tons of self-deprecating charm, he was simultaneously zippy and steady.
Hepped up on Diet Coke and sheer enthusiasm, he crunched numbers, analyzed obscure demographics, and decoded the intricate stupidities of the electoral college system.
He never seemed to nap — between election day and Friday night, Kornacki reportedly got five hours of sleep. When he finally took a brief break, he ended up recalling himself because Pennsylvania was blowing up.
Forget grabbing sleep, there’s still votes coming in in PA. I’m heading back to the studio. In the old days, there was USA Up All Night. Tonight, it’ll be MSNBC Up All Night. Come on along for the ride.
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) November 6, 2020
And as Kornacki was watching the election, we were watching him. #TrackingKornacki started trending on social media, and Steve soon became the internet’s boyfriend, beloved by both men and women, by folks straight and gay. (Steve himself came out as gay in 2011, and he’s “seemingly single,” says one source.)
“I love that attraction to Steve Kornacki is its own sexual orientation that emerges during elections,” wrote one Twitter commentator. Clearly, crushing on Steve is its very own electoralsexual thing.
Kornacki may be in his 40s, but he comes off as much younger, with a marked resemblance to a cub reporter in an old screwball comedy. (John King, the king of the boards over at CNN, also has a slightly anachronistic look. Watching him is like getting your 2020 American election news from Spencer Tracy.)
Kornacki, with his clean-cut looks and wholesome preppie style, has been declared a “chart-throb” and a “map-daddy” by his fans. Even his pants have their own hashtag, #TrackingKornacki’sKhakis, and fashion writers have done a deep dive to reveal they are the classic straight cut from The Gap in a colour called “palomino brown.”
Kornacki now has his own celebrity following, which includes Chrissy Teigen, Billy Eichner and Leslie Jones. (At one point, Jones went into absolute NSFW ecstasy when Kornacki broke out his calculator.)
I honestly dunno how steve is still going im bout to die pic.twitter.com/R8IEt8lbIj
— chrissy teigen (@chrissyteigen) November 5, 2020
Celebs — and everyone else — seem to be drawn to Kornacki’s dedication, to his unassuming competence as well as his disarming frankness about the inevitable glitches (“Good Lord, I don’t know what I just pressed!”).
In a time of crosstalk and uncertainty, he offers numbers and not spin, he emphasizes facts and not speculation, becoming a reliable, reassuring presence.
On Nov. 4, after a fraught, sleepless night and a morning that promised merely more of the same, Kornacki made a short video in the MSNBC hallway. Hazy, hoarse, sleep-deprived and (temporarily) tieless, he just wanted to thank people for the “incredibly kind and friendly and nice messages everybody had on social media there.”
A message from @SteveKornacki. #TrackingKornacki pic.twitter.com/pY7hl6KAVc
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 4, 2020
And wow, there’s a combination of words that hasn’t been used very often in the last four years — “kind and friendly” and “social media.” That’s maybe the absolute best thing about Steve Kornacki. Not only is he nice, he makes the rest of us nice, too.
alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca
Alison Gillmor
Writer
Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto’s York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992.
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