I have a borderline obsession with the TV drama The Good Fight, the sequel to The Good Wife and perhaps even the better show, which blends politics, law and excellent power suits with audacious plots ripped straight from the headlines – one recent episode involved the existence, or not, of the infamous “pee tape”. Its most recent season has grappled with the absurdity of the Trump era and the toll that is taking on its lead character Diane Lockhart’s grasp of reality.
In a real-world story that seems destined to test Diane even further, Kim Kardashian West has been lobbying President Trump for the release of great-grandmother Alice Marie Johnson, 62, who has been in prison since 1996 for a non-violent drug offence. Kardashian West has teamed up with that custodian of justice, fairness and transparency, Jared Kushner, to bring the case to the attention of the president, who would need to grant clemency for Johnson to be released. Given that one of Trump’s proposals for tackling the US’s opioid epidemic has been to put forward the idea of the death penalty for drug traffickers, and given that he has congratulated the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, for his “unbelievable job on the drug problem”, or bloody, death-ridden, human-rights-abusing crackdown, it remains to be seen where the chips will fall in this particular domestic drugs case.
The power of the Kardashians never fails to astonish; when Kylie Jenner tweeted that she didn’t open Snapchat any more (“ugh this is so sad”) it wiped £1bn off the app’s stock market value. So while the idea that Johnson’s case is getting the attention it deserves because a reality star has brought her plight into focus is a sign we are living in an era of absurdity, it is still not as absurd as the fact that Johnson has spent two decades in prison without the prospect of release.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
