Subtext Conflict: Celebrity Vs. Otherness

[babylonsister]

Subtext Conflict: Celebrity Vs. Otherness


Something hasn’t felt quite right about the strategy John McCain’s campaign has been using to go after Barack Obama. It’s not a partisan objection to McCain going negative; that’s a rational choice he has to make if he wants a shot at winning. It’s that within the scattershot approach to finding an attack line that sticks, the two main through-lines are in subtextual conflict with one another.

How can someone being portrayed as "the biggest celebrity in the world" also be painted as radical and out of the mainstream? Either Obama is like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: a fluffy, substanceless, mass-consumed but empty celebrity-for-celebrity’s sake, or he is an unfamiliar and dangerous other with a hidden anti-American agenda.

It’s hard to reconcile the two. By trumpeting Obama's popularity, McCain is calling him – by definition – a safe, easily digestible consumer product, broadly acceptable in the mainstream. Thus, McCain boxes himself into a corner when he wants to make the argument not to elect Obama because he’s so far outside the mainstream.

The problem with trying to thread the needle and have it both ways by making both messages stick simultaneously is that if Obama is a dangerous other with a secret America-hating agenda, it’s hard to call him vapid. You can’t be sharp enough to be cunning sleeper and also be an empty airhead.

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http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/08/subtext-conflict-celebrity-vs-otherness.html

[BlooInBloo]

1. Consistency isn't a part of a throw-shit-hope-it-sticks campaign. Never has been.

[TexasObserver]

2. Indeed. Can't you hear the old "well, if it isn't Mr. Fancy Pants Big City Lawyah!"

Obama represents so much for them to hate. Young, attractive, intelligent, urbane, articulate, a professional, a lawyer, a constitutional scholar, a black man, an unusual name. So much for them to hate.

[babylonsister]

3. It's so sad to me; picking the better candidate would be in all of our

best interests, and we surely need an intelligent, urbane, articulate person after the past 8 years of just the opposite. Too bad that doesn't matter.

[TexasObserver]

4. What they do is find a strength, then think of a word that has negative connotations

For example, what do you do with a presidential nominee who draws large, excited crowds everywhere he goes? How do you undermine that?

You minimize it. You cast aspersions on it. You label it "celebrity."

[AtomicKitten]

5. Pigeon-holing is hard work.