politics in a pop-culture key

Slate’s Christopher Beam awards coolness points to Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton because Obama has a way cooler late-night show behind him:

In a campaign full of bizarre, vaguely defensible analogies—Obama is a Mac, Clinton is a PC! Obama is Starbucks, Clinton is Dunkin Donuts!—here’s a new one to consider: Obama is The Colbert Report, Hillary is Saturday Night Live.

It’s worth reading the whole thing to see how deeply into our culture this year’s political campaign has spread.

The celebrity magazines have gotten in on the act too (or, more precisely, the candidates have both reached out to the vast market of people who follow the ups and downs of celebrities), as was noted in the New Yorker last week:

Back in 2005—the era of Britney’s marriage to Kevin Federline and Lindsay’s turn in “Herbie Fully Loaded”—Janice Min, the editor of Us Weekly, argued that even smart, well-informed people need a “safe place,” free from hard news. But in 2008—as Lindsay emerges from rehab, and Britney from the psych ward—Min has had a change of heart. For the past month, Us Weekly has been breaking political stories …

Min, a longtime political junkie, has started to cover the political candidates in her magazine [e.a.].

“I’d noticed that there’s an incredible interest in what’s going on with the Democratic nomination,” she said. “You look back to when Kerry was running—it was hard to get much enthusiasm mustered up. But it became pretty clear to me that the Us audience is also following these two candidates, who have a lot of star power. You go to dinner with friends and the conversation goes from Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Britney. They are a legitimate part of—for better or worse—the celebrity orbit.”

A longtime and celebrity watcher, Min understands something that few people get—that politics is like showbiz:

“I’ve always said that celebrities are like politicians, in that they need the public to support them to stay in office,” Min said the other day. “An unloved celebrity is no longer a celebrity.”

And an unloved politician is no longer a politician:

But a loved politician is definitely still a politician:

Though, in my opinion, that wasn’t a very swift move.

But what do I know about image creation and management?