Hail to the Chief Celebrity? That's Politics Mixed With Entertainment
Politicians "want the upside of celebrityhood without any of the intrusiveness, and that's impossible," West says.
Lindsay Lohan could attest to that. She felt it necessary to advise Palin about how to behave (yes, the irony is head-snapping) via her MySpace blog: "Hint Hint, Pali Pal — Don't pose for anymore tabloid covers, you're not a celebrity, you're running for office to represent our, your, my COUNTRY!"
Courtney E. Martin, 28, author and columnist for The American Prospect magazine, says many young people tend to see politicians as just another kind of celebrity, albeit in bad clothes. She blames the decline in civic education, which leaves them ill-equipped to understand issues or identify falsehoods. "But the media are feeding us what we ask for — I don't see a lot of letters to the editor demanding more policy coverage" instead of celebrity coverage, she says.
Peter Levine, a scholar of civic learning at Tufts University in Boston who blogs about politics and celebrity, says that when candidates do something policy-related, it doesn't get as much attention as, say, an argument over lipstick on a pig. "One interpretation is that this is not the candidates' fault because substantive stuff does not pay," Levine says. "Lipstick got more attention than McCain's education plan. There are big incentives for politicians to act like celebrities, but it's bad for our politics."
Nevertheless, it is likely to continue, even intensify. Gary Indiana, novelist, essayist and author of Schwarzenegger Syndrome: Politics and Celebrity in the Age of Contempt, says the importance of celebrity in politics has become even more extreme since the celebrity governor of California was elected in 2003. Some people deserve to be celebrated, he says, and Schwarzenegger has turned out to be not the worst governor California ever had.
"The celebrity factor is in direct proportion to the unhappiness of most people — the greater the misery, the more powerful celebrity becomes, because people want to escape reality," Indiana says. "But in this culture, anyone can be a celebrity.
"All you have to do is put a new face out there, take a catchphrase that means nothing and repeat it endlessly, and people will be distracted the same way a bull is distracted by a matador's cape."
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