Presi-Celeb-Realitics

           

Privacy has gone the way of cassettes, radio, and monogamy. Of course, in our preset internet-induced Age of the Voyeur, that’s been a largely understood concept. However, as reality television splashes dysfunctional millionaire housewives whose family values don’t stand up to reality TV’s polygamist Brady Bunch, we’re seeing a change in the tone of politics, particularly the Presidential variety. Although our present commander-in-chief is stoic, even placid, he retains enough charisma and charm to appease many of the monkey-see monkey-do public.

            In 2008, however, McCain and pre-reality-show Palin set a precedent in tone and approach that many voters have come to expect from their politicians and Palin is more than willing to deliver. She’s uninformed, confrontational, divisive, and unapologetic; she is to politics what Jersey Shore is to primetime television. Though not visibly drunk in public, she nonetheless spouted nonsensical proclamations into any of the mainstream media lenses she explicitly disliked but tenaciously sought. (The lamestream media.) She would get into verbal pissing matches with just about anyone that rose to her simple-minded barbs. There wasn’t a back-country, down-home, beer-swilling turn of phrase she didn’t like. In 2010 she put out a map of crosshairs and proliferated hunting and shooting metaphors for campaigning against Democrats all over the country (of course, with the Tucson shooting she couldn’t ignore that backlash).

            My point is this, Palin is exactly the kind of gauche, sensational, and insubstantial politician that a large portion of our country loves, or loves to hate. She gets headlines, she stirs the pot, and she has almost nothing useful to say or do for anyone. She is the GOP’s very own Snookie.

            That’s what is so frustrating about her present media stunt, her mystery bus tour. She’s managed to distract the entire news cycle at a time when there are very important issues happening at home and abroad. Yet everywhere I look news outlets are reporting on Palin’s bus tour; where’s she going to go? Is she going to run for President? What’s she doing?

            What’s she doing? She’s getting people to ask these questions, building name recognition, even soliciting donations for a campaign that she isn’t even running yet! Is she going to run for President? Are you kidding? She’s riding around in a tour bus with her signature from her own reality-show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” equally prominent on the side to the Preamble of the Constitution. She’s touring major U.S. historical sites, and she’s stumping along the way. Of course she’s running form President! With this kind of shameless display it’s not even necessary to declare. Palin’s ability to distract from real candidates of substance and issues of importance is exactly why I now have to invent a word.

            Presi-celeb-realitics:n. A political campaign or process characterized more by attention-seeking and distraction than by any meaningful discourse.

            I’ve never seen so obvious a display of playground-style attention-seeking as Palin’s mystery bus tour “family vacation”, and never had less faith in the mainstream news to separate meaningful political reporting from moronic posturing on the part of someone that’s more reality TV distraction than viable candidate