Celebrity & Politics
We liberals seem to have a difficult time at politics because we like to talk about ideas and problems and solutions to those problems, even though we know that the electorate doesn't particularly care to talk about ideas and solutions to problems.
Instead, what gets the candidate elected is celebrity, that elusive and vacuous quality of being famous for being well-known. Clues to this truth have littered the political field for years, if not decades, but it's hard to accept let alone capitalize on. The McCain camp knows it, that's why they tried mocking Obama's rock-star popularity, but perhaps that campaign didn't work so well because, even though we don't like to acknowledge it, rock-star celebrity is the reason presidents get elected.
Obama is a celebrity. Remarkably, some of his celebrity seems to have come from talking about ideas, but that may be just an illusion. Hillary is a major celebrity, too. That's why her devotees felt so betrayed, because they feel that she has much more celebrity than Obama, making her the obvious choice for the nomination; getting fewer delegates during the primaries was just an annoyance, a minor detail.
And McCain is something of a celebrity, too. He's famous for being a POW, a type of celebrity also frequently called "hero", although it's an unusually passive type of heroism. And so the candidate keeps reminding us that he was a POW and people talk about it and that brings celebrity.
But, of course, Ms. Palin is the biggest celebrity of the moment because she's such a fairy princess, a real Cinderella. Wow, pretty and smart and no one had ever heard of her and then she gets asked to the ball by the prince. That will make people talk, and it certainly has, particularly Democrats. They talk incessantly about how Palin was a bad choice, which is true, but net effect is to increase her celebrity and make her ever more electable.
And speaking of Ms. Palin, what started this whole train of thought was watching Obama on Letterman's show (at Joe's) as they discussed the piggish lipstick story. I was delighted with Obama's observation that, to be logical about it, since Bush's failed policies would actually be the pig in the "putting lipstick on a pig" metaphor, Ms. Palin would actually be the lipstick, not the pig.
But then, it was probably the type of analysis that only appeals to intellectual liberals like me. On the other hand, his delivery with the little chuckle in his voice might add a bit to Obama's celebrity. We'll see, I guess.
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on Friday, 12 September 2008 at 00.59
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Can celebrity be bestowed and come on within a day or two? Evidently in Palin's case it can.
I've long felt we have too many celebrities. One reason is that it's too easy to become one. Another is that we never discard them. People who appeared in sitcoms for a season or two decades ago are still celebrities. People who had a hit record decades ago retain celebrity status. Despite his checkered (to put it mildly) past, even OJ Simpson seems to have held on to some of his celebrity status.
Maybe we need to form some kind of clearing house, to send out an annual survey list of celebrities' names to a large, random sampling of Americans. Check the thumb up to keep one. Check thumb down to dump someone from the official list.
Come to think of it, though, this would surely cause some who are relieved of their celebrity status to go out and do something to generate enough publicity to get it back.
News item: "Ed McMahon, clad only in Speedo, goes wading in fountain at ritzy mall." Or "Joan Rivers busted for hawking baubles on Sunset Strip without peddler license."
Uh, maybe we should leave bad enough alone.