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February 14, 2008
When politics becomes (insert trend here).
Today's fad website:
Trendiness, and the inevitable knee-jerk backlash that follows it, is especially unfortunate in presidential politics. But I guess it's unavoidable in today's endlessly-meta, media-everywhere environment. Matt Bai has this blog entry today at the NY Times:
After Super Tuesday, I was surprised to find that a friend of mine, a lifelong Democrat who had been pledging his allegiance to Barack Obama all year, had stepped into the voting booth and suddenly changed his mind. He voted, instead, for Hillary Clinton, and here’s why: he’d watched that video online —you know, the one starring celebrities like will.i.am, Scarlett Johansson and Herbie Hancock—and he thought it made Obama look Hollywood smug, as if supporting him were this year’s version of wearing an AIDS ribbon on your lapel. My friend didn’t want anything to do with the latest chic cause, and he just couldn’t bring himself to pull the lever for the guy who now symbolized the things he liked least about Democratic politics, starting with all those stars who think they know more about America than the people who live in it.
The friend's choice is no more informed than that of the trend victims he holds in such contempt; both are based on superficial bullshit. But I suspect that this kind of decision-making is awfully common this election year.
Kerri told me of some rocker kid she spoke with who was all excited about caucasing for Obama, yet so politically clueless that when Kerri asked him who his second choice would be, the answer was along the lines of "McCain, because he seems like a badass."
Ah well, it's the sausage factory as usual. And if trendiness is what it takes to restore some fucking sanity to the executive branch, I say set out the Kool-Aid. Just try to encourage everyone to get a bit more informed as you hand them the pitcher.
This, of course, was inevitable:
