Obama God or Senator Britney?
By LisaB on August 5, 2008 at 7:00 AM in Barack Obama, Media
1) Just one more thing about the Obama / Britney ad kerfluffle. Terribly smart people have been yelling about ways in which the ad was racist, in bad taste, or reflective of celebrity culture wrongly applied to a “promising leader — full of wisdom, charisma, and vulnerable humanity.”
Those arguments have been done to death and I’m not going there.
However. There was an interesting article in the American Prospect back on July 9. While I hardly think this article is the genesis of the “Obama = vapid celebrity” meme, it certainly predates the McCain ad.
Read the rest ->
Written around the time when Obama flipped on taking public campaign funds, the premise of this piece was that Obama supporters should keep his fallibility as a person in mind and not deify him.
(Uh, not only has THAT boat sailed, but everyone is on the Lido deck burning incense and chanting O – baaaaaa – maaaaa.)
But here is what Courtney Martin, in American Prospect, said back in July:
The long-term goal, however, should not be just to jolt America’s youth awake with an injection of politics (masquerading as celebrity. It should be to stir young voters to recognize the significance of civic engagement and take the first step to making it a lifetime affair. It should be to move young voters to invest in Obama’s political philosophies, the antecedent to his policies, and really reflect on the meaning of leadership, citizenship, and nationhood. It should be to convince them that the American dream — which Obama represents so romantically — is not an immaculate conception but an endangered product of just economic and immigration policies and institutional enlightenment.
Obama speaks and emotes on par with some of this country’s, even this world’s, most gifted orators. For this, I am grateful. It feels amazing to shed some genuine tears over a political speech, to have some sense of what my parents meant when they talked about being personally invested in JFK’s ideas, to actually believe in someone who has a flag waving behind them. When Obama smiles, it’s as if a long-dimmed light has been fiercely illuminated.
And somehow the writer is worried Obama might be “god-ified”? Looks to me like he’s already been credited with “Let there be light. . . ” I’m just sayin.
Let’s not let Obama be our deity or our Britney Spears.
Hello! Courtney doesn’t want people to allow Obama to be “our God or our Britney?” MY primary ballot didn’t offer that choice. I’d have noticed. Really. That would have stuck with me. Hmmmmm. All-knowing, infinite, outside of time and place, all compassionate or, or, or, . . . Britney?
Honestly, I don’t know what to do with this. Obama as God – well I’m familiar with THAT meme. Obama as Britney? God or Britney? How do those two options even get together? What kind of person could be classified as God or Britney and who could think it?
To her credit, the author finishes up by saying that supporters must hold Obama accountable for his promises.
A critical lens, not rose-colored glasses, will best serve us in the coming months of this presidential campaign. If we see Obama as a star, then we will be forced to watch him fall from such great heights and experience the darkness afterward. If we see him as a promising leader — full of wisdom, charisma, and vulnerable humanity — then we can walk the long, bumpy road ahead. . .
But while people are trying to hold that “critical lens” instead of the “rose-colored glasses” during the “coming months of this presidential campaign,” hoping not to see Obama “fall from such great heights” and thus “experience the darkness afterward,” even as we “walk the long, bumpy road ahead,” we might also stop to realize the notion of Obama as celebrity or even, gasp, as Britney, did not originate with a McCain campaign ad.
Courtney Martin simply recognized the danger and wrote about it. The possibility of Obama later being characterized as a celebrity (or God) was most likely solidified with Chris Matthews’ tingling leg and sundry concert appearances.
But the Britney reference? Hey the Republicans aren’t THAT original.
2) In a previous article (The Celeb Factor in Politics) in the American Prospect, Martin wrote:
It’s safe to presume that the celebrity worshippers — the demographic that keeps Access Hollywood’s ratings high and US Weekly’s circulation booming — are more than happy to see Oprah intervening and ScarJo and Obama corresponding. With or without a great campaign narrative, celebrity is the sugar that makes the political medicine go down for these E! Entertainment Television fans. It’s exciting, actually, to think about the ways in which celebrity involvement has the potential to increase civic participation, even if it’s a little gross that it’s come to that.
Young people, in general, are fairly comfortable with the blurring of previously defined lines — between business and nonprofit (The Gap’s RED collection), philanthropy and fun (Living Liberally), fiction and reality (The Hills). The intersection between celebrity and politics seems like sort of a no-brainer to the under-30 set.
But, as the campaign season solidifies, will Obama’s cache with celebrities justify older voters’ worries about his seriousness? One of his challenges in the months ahead is to convince fence-riders that he will make responsible policy decisions, convey authority, and be fiscally strategic — not exactly qualities you associate with Hollywood stars. One might wonder why Obama has time to jot notes to a starlet when he has a family and a campaign to run. Or one might question the relevance of a celebrity endorsement for a political candidate in the first place.
Looks like a pretty fair analysis of why the Obama campaign perpetuated the “celebrity candidate” and then complained vociferously when called on it.
Oh, and publication date for this one? June 27, 2008.
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