A Chicago artist is obsessed with Sarah Palin—and not necessarily in a good way.

“I’ve been following her religiously,” [Bruce Elliott] said Monday at the bar. “I had never heard of her before, like everyone else. I find her bizarrely fascinating, even though I pretty much despise everything she stands for.”

You will know her name. He will make her even more famous.

At the end of last week, the MSM gave a collective sigh of relief to find poll results that showed Sarah Palin’s star had dimmed.

What’s that? She drew a crowd of 60,000 in Florida on Saturday?

The Villages, a vast, upscale planned community north of Orlando, has about 70,000 mostly adult residents — many of them military retirees — who vote reliably Republican in statewide races. Tens of thousands inched along roads into the picturesque town square of the complex, where they stood in sweltering heat for about four hours as local GOP officials and a country band revved up the crowd.

“Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!” they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed — along with free water bottles — by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000.

Admiring throngs mobbed the Palin family’s arrival and departure, snapping souvenir pictures. Autograph seekers thrust campaign signs, caps with the McCain-Palin logo and copies of magazines with her face on their covers, and the Palins responded warmly.

In its headline, CNN refers to a crowd of “thousands.” Inside the piece, the number 60,000 is mentioned.

Though the audience was one of the Palin’s largest to date, the actual size of the crowd was unclear. According Mike Tucker, the fire chief of The Villages who was made available to the press by the McCain campaign, 60,000 people crammed into the streets to see Palin speak.

“There were people down the side streets, people down in the parking areas, people who couldn’t quite make it around to the main areas,” Tucker said, adding that many people were let into the rally without tickets, making the crowd count impossible to verify.

The enthusiastic crowd welcomed Palin with shouts of “USA!,” and she chanted back along with them. As in many of her speeches, Palin promised that hard-working Americans will dig the country out of its current economic woes, lacing her remarks with fulsome praise for the nation’s industrious spirit. She used the words “America” or “Americans” 24 times during her 22-minute speech.

Polls, schmolls.

The genie is out of the bottle.

I can’t believe I have to live through another election stolen by the Republicans … ’cause you do know that’s what’s gonna happen, right?

It’s fun to be a detached observer of the Incredible Campaign of 2008, which has galvanized a nation. Our “mass of niches” culture seems to have coalesced in these past two weeks into a genuine mass audience. It’s probably temporary and of course there’s no guarantee that getting our attention will lead to our doing something (or even voting), but we are riveted to the political soap opera unfolding before our eyes.

The viewership for various segments of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions was huge.

As a television draw, John McCain was every bit the equal of Barack Obama.

The GOP presidential candidate attracted roughly the same number of viewers to his convention acceptance speech Thursday as Obama did before the Democrats last week, according to Nielsen Media Research.

It marked the end of an astonishing run where more than 40 million people watched political speeches on three nights by Obama, McCain and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The Republican convention was the most-watched convention on television ever, beating a standard set by the Democrats a week earlier.

Three times in two weeks, political speeches were watched by more people than the “American Idol” finale, the Academy Awards and the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics this year.

“It clearly suggests that a great number of Americans think that who will be the next president is important and worthy of their time,” said Tom Rosenstiel, a former political reporter and director of the Project for Excellence in journalism.

One day, this will be seen as a watershed—the moment that the world of politics, borrowing from the world of showbiz, inspired the Couch Potatoes of Amercia to take a good, hard (though, possibly, brief) look at their country, their neighbors, and, most of all, themselves and to see if maybe we all couldn’t do a little bit more to get along, goddamnit, and while we’re at it, to do more for ourselves—individually and collectively.

But I must be dreaming, because that would be true progress.

However, I do have some hope that something better will result from the election of 2008, regardless of whether the Republicans or the Democrats win the White House this time around, because all of the candidates are dedicated—and inspiring—public servants (even if they are politicians and thus by nature suspect. Every one of the current crop has sacrificed something and done good things for others. Along the way, we unruly American, with our crude democratic system, shoved aside some folks who had already had their turn and we got rid of at least one rotten apple and we rejected alarmism as a way of daily life).

Well, goddamn!

Ain’t that America somethin’ to see, baby!

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, agree with ‘em or disagree with ‘em, we’ve finally got some great role models (new heroes and villains, as JFK memorably referred to them in 1959,***) that people are paying attention to.

And so we sail into uncharted waters.

————–

*** Admirably, JFK warned the people not to believe in the false idols launched by the new TV era. Then he proceeded to become one of them. He succeeded beyond his wildest imagination, because politicians are still emulating his style, and Democratic politicians all covet the imprimatur of the Kennedys and … but that’s a story for another day. Let’s just say for now that the imprimatur will long outlive the Kennedys.

Politicians cannot possibly accomplish everything they promise the people. They are ambitious above all else. John McCain knows this and is torn up about it, as the NYT reported the other day; nevertheless, he’s running for president for a second time. And he is using war strategies (such as surprise) in his political campaign. He means to win—with honor and within the rules of the arena.

There’s some triumphalism in the land (or at least on the left side of the blogosphere) about this magazine cover:

Palin detractors have concluded that her appearance in a “tabloid” under the headline “SCANDAL” will hurt her (and McCain) [e.a.].

Let’s say, instead, like millions of working-class Americans, you get your “news” on the political race from the supermarket aisle. Let’s say you’re — I don’t know, a “hockey mom” — and you’re intrigued by this Sarah Palin person you’ve been hearing so much about since Friday.

So you’re shopping this week — and what do you see on the cover of US Weekly? That esteemed journalistic institution is taking it right to John McCain’s running mate — with a hard-hitting piece that details the “scandal” involving her daughter’s pregnancy. …

It should be noted that there is no new reporting here that I can discern — just a greatest hits from what’s out there.

But this, to me, is the clearest evidence yet that the McCain-Palin campaign is losing the battle over Palin’s image. US Weekly readers are the voters her selection was designed to attract. There’s not much to like in this early take — and not much to indicate that the next round will be much better.

I say these detractors are dead wrong, because they don’t know their “tabloids.” US Weekly offers its (semi-respectable) readers a weekly (fake) soap opera. Its readers know that they’re being entertained. And they’re waiting for the next installment: Palin’s redemption.

Of course Palin may never get coverage like this from US:

Longtime readers know how cynical I am, so it won’t come as any surprise to them to read that I’m impressed by the immediate, visible impact Sarah Palin has had on the McCain campaign. Jonathan Martin reports:

The Palin effect: crowd size

17,000+ today for the McCain-Palin rally outside of St. Louis, according to a Secret Service magnetometer count provided by the campaign.

As one veteran of Missouri politics said, that’s the sort of crowd usually seen in October for a president — not in August for a candidate.

Call me a simpleton, but that looks like evidence of a bounce.

I am not a fan of John McCain for president (though I am a big John McCain fan). In fact, I find myself leaning toward Obama now. But I do admire McCain’s moxie and his mental toughness, and, purely from a political point of view, his decision to pick Palin.

Noemi Emery laid out the items in the plus column of the decision three days ago (impressive!), and it looks like many of her predictions are coming true—against all odds, since she didn’t take Gustav into account, and even that is figuring to put the GOP at a (relative) advantage: Bush and Cheney won’t be speaking at the convention due to the weather, and yet the worst of the storm happens to be bypassing New Orleans. [Who is stage-managing this show? This dude or dudette is even better than the guys who handled the Beijing Olympics and Obama's acceptance speech performance! ---ed.]

1. Steps on the story of Obama’s speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. [ see today's NYT ***---ed.] The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam. [ Not really, but you can blame Gustav, and/or the media, whichever one is more politically convenient ---ed.]

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person. [true dat; see the first paragraph of this post ---ed.]

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets. [yep. I think that's why Obama's fans are so incredibly upset. Palin is, undeniably, an agent of change---both in her actions and her image. She makes Obama less special. Plus: she's fresh meat. We're tired of him. He has used up all his material. She gives us a new character to root for or to deride---or, if you're Andrew Sullivan, to try to ruin. Sorry if you're offended, but that's the way it is in our democracy. It has always been like this. The only difference now is that we're attuned to it. The curtain has been pulled back to reveal fully the behind-the-stage machinations on both sides of the aisle and in the newsrooms of the MSM. The means to report---and to reveal formerly closely held secrets---has been spread to anyone with an internet connection. Likewise, the means to make up lies and spread them instantly across the globe.

And that's as true for Daily Kos diarists as it is for the Russian prime minister, Dmitri Medvedev, who is taking advantage of the three-ring circus that is our election cycle to declare a new era, in which Russia has a sphere of influence to compete with America, which isn't so exceptional. Take that! ---ed.]

6. May detach some young people, especially women. [Meghan McCain gave Palin a big endorsement as a "cool role model." ---ed.]

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary. [Hmmm. That's complicated. ---ed.]

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

etc.

Read the whole thing.

Obama built a very impressive organization from the ground up, and created the impression of a pro-Obama movement, which in turn has sparked an interest in politics the likes of which this country (and Europe) hasn’t seen in decades (if the interest of the under-30 crowd around me is any indication … but I have to say that the jury is still out on that, because I live in an unrepresentative bubble in downtown Manhattan and cannot extrapolate much from my immediate surroundings).

McCain, however, seems to have ignited a movement. If indeed he has been mulling over this choice for a long time, you have to tip your hat to his boldness (or recklessness … take your pick). The Republican Party needs a shake-up not only for McCain to have a shot at the White House but in order for the Republicans to have a shot at staying relevant in our fast-moving society.

John Podhoretz hinted at this immediately after McCain picked Palin last Friday:

For the first time this year, there will be some pop-cultural interest in a Republican. Her family story — a conservative Republican with a blue-collar worker of a husband who takes primary responsibility for childrearing with a special-needs baby — is like a dream People Magazine cover.

And indeed, here is People’s immediate coverage.

Podhoretz continued:

Even though her pro-life views will make her anathema to New York City women’s-magazine editors, the possibility of huge newsstand sales in Red State Wal-Marts is just going to be too tempting for them to ignore her or belittle her.

It won’t swing an election, but it’s the kind of thing that can help change the narrative of the election.

It can do more than change the narrative of the election. McCain is confronting the culture war head-on. Suddenly, it’s a little hard to picture rural folk as bitter gun-and religion-clingers now, isn’t it?

Crazy!

A rejuvenation of both brands—Democratic and Republican—would be really healthy for our Republic. Long live the founders!

———–

*** The Democrats’ best-laid plans for a post-convention honeymoon have been derailed, Jeff Zeleny writes:

The Obama-Biden tour, officially branded “On the Road to Change,” drew far less attention than the campaign had envisioned. Before their plane took off Friday from the Democratic convention in Denver, Senator John McCain dropped the bombshell news that he had chosen Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. Then, as Hurricane Gustav churned toward the Gulf Coast, Mr. McCain turned up in Mississippi on Sunday.

Gawker is already snarking about Michael Phelps, natch (with help from those who know Phelps).

That was fast! Michael Phelps was a rocking gold-medal winner, then a record-breaking champion athletic God, then the $100 million endorsement kingpin, then a celebrity sex symbol. The whole process took maybe a week. Now? …

Bloggers aren’t the only ones slamming Phelps in public. Here’s the stone-cold way fellow 2008 Olympian swimmer Amanda Beard reacted to rumors that she hooked up with him:

“Eww, that’s nasty… I have never, ever hooked up with Michael Phelps,” Beard said …

Meanwhile, the dorky, unsophisticated TV-viewing audience loves him:

The most jaw-dropping statistic: The night Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal was the most viewed Saturday night program (31.1 million) on NBC since 1990. The night peaked at 39.9 million viewers during the 4 X 100 medley relay. NBC promised advertisers a 14.5 primetime rating, according to SportsBusiness Journal’s John Ourand. It will get that even with the usual second-week tune-out.

Who doesn’t love a winner?

Moe, that’s who—that S.I. cover is such a retread, she says, missing the point: that normal people (that is: people who don’t obsessively read Gawker in order to confirm that they’re right to envy and hate anyone who is successful) love winners…at least for a while.

This time it’s courtesy of a totally tone-deaf Michelle Obama, who suggests that Barack is an accessory:

“Barack and I — as partners, as friends and as lovers — we accessorize each other in many ways,” said Obama, wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. “The best thing I love having on me is Barack on my arm and vice versa, whether it’s having him standing there smiling at me, or watching him mesmerize a crowd or talk to some seniors in a senior center.”

That is sure to improve Obama’s image as a potential commander in chief, dontcha think? There will be more in this vein, too. HuffPo reports:

Among the highlights in the Essence story, Ifill reports from the campaign bus as the family travels to Montana, and how they interact with supporters and with each other. “The Obamas pride themselves on creating a family picture that is authentically black with shades of Norman Rockwell,” she summarizes.

Listen up: I totally understand the cultural fascination with the Obama family. Even I am fascinated by the Obama family. But selling the family—printing the legend, as it were—only gets you fans. It is no guarantee of votes.

Minor correction: It may get you votes in the primary if your fairy godmother’s name is Oprah.

In this paper, we use geographic differences in subscriptions to O! – The Oprah Magazine and the sale of books Winfrey recommended as part of Oprah’s Book Club to assess whether her endorsement affected the Primary outcomes. We find her endorsement had a positive effect on the votes Obama received, increased the overall voter participation rate, and increased the number of contributions received by Obama. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah’s influence and Obama’s success in previous elections, nor with underlying local political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey’s endorsement was responsible for approximately additional 1,000,000 votes for Obama.

I wrote about the Oprah-Obama nexus here, where I also discussed Matthew Baum’s research about the impact of “soft news” on “low information voters.” Maybe all that overexposure did have an effect for Obama in the primaries. But even if it did, Oprah’s endorsement is not helping him today, in the general, where some pollling tells rather a different story.

Barack Obama has lost ground among some of his strongest bases of support, including young people, women, Democrats and independents, according to a new ATV/Zogby poll. …

Zogby called the results a “notable turnaround” from a July survey he did that showed Obama leading by 46-36.

“McCain made signifciant gains at Obama’s expense among some of what had been Obama’s strongest demographic groups,” Zogby said.

His findings:

-Among voters aged 18-29, Obama lost 16 percent and McCain gained 20. Obama still leads, 49-38;

-Among women, McCain gained 10 percentage points. Obama now leads 43-38;

-Among independents, Obama lost an 11 point lead. They’re now tied;

-Among Democrats, Obama’s support dropped from 83 percent to 74 percent;

-Among Catholics, Obama lost the 11 point lead he had in July and now trails McCain by 15.

Zogby said Obama also lost ground among minorities.

He attributed Obama’s erosion of support to McCain’s criticisms of Obama as inexperienced in the wake of Obama’s trip to Europe, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq and to Obama’s flips on some issues.

The dramatic rescue of Ingrid Betancourt also exposed an interesting mind-set in Europe, as The Economist notes:

How dare the Colombians rescue Ingrid Betancourt?

THAT, more or less seems to be the reaction from slabs of the European press, notably in the Francophone world, to the astonishing military operation that rescued Ms Betancourt and 14 other hostages from the FARC guerrillas in Colombia.

The grudging reactions come from left and right in France, where successive governments had pushed the Colombian government hard to accept demands made by the FARC, and negotiate the release of Ms Betancourt, a politician from a small ecological party with dual Colombian and French nationality. French leaders, including Nicolas Sarkozy, had also put much faith in the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, as a negotiator with the FARC. Instead, in the end, it was the Colombian army under the tough right-wing president, Álvaro Uribe, that rescued the hostages in a daring undercover operation.

Not that this didn’t stop Sarkozy from claiming as much credit as possible, to the deep annoyance of many, as The Times (London) noted last week:

The French Senate gave an emotional standing ovation to the 46-year-old politician and magazines and television were still saturated by the image of what Paris Match called “the new global icon”.

But dissent surrounding Ms Betancourt, who was freed last week from the Colombian jungle after six years in captivity, has now spread from the internet to mainstream opinion, with some saying that France has overdosed on “Ingridmania”.

“It is irritating,” said Dominique Dhombres, a television columnist for Le Monde newspaper. “It’s a beautiful story about a beautiful woman, but she has been turned into the Madonna of modern times . . . Everything else has been forgotten and it suits Sarkozy fine,” he told The Times.

Perhaps M. Sarkozy is trying to compete (in an oh so gentlemanly way) with Mme. Sarkozy, who, incredibly, is peddling her music at the moment:

Here’s your chance to listen to the new musical oeuvre from Carla Bruni. In a marketing build-up worthy of Madonna or a Stones release, Mrs Sarkozy’s record company has put Comme si de rien n’était (As if nothing happened) on the internet for free listening.

This must be the first time that the presidency of a leading nation has promoted a pop album. The Elysée Palace has been working closely with Naive records to maximise the launch of breathy love songs by the first lady. The repercussions have even gone as far as Japan, which was miffed by Bruni’s decision not to join the other spouses at this week’s G8 summit. She decided to stay in Paris to advance the release date. Today, she was on France-Inter radio doing the first of a series of promotional interviews which culminate with a long live session on TF1 television news — the most watched show — on Friday evening.

Listen: I’ve been telling you that infotainment rules. (In France, they even have a new word for it: “pipolisation***.”)This is what I mean! It’s Marketing Above All^TM

The sultry first lady of France is peddling love songs written for her husband!

Think about it!

—————
*** pipolisation is probably akin to Bush Derangement Syndrome, but, as with all things French, it is more clearly defined (specifically, as a mental illnes):

“Serge Hefez, a practicing psychiatrist, has identified a new mental illness among the French: obsessive Sarkosis, an unhealthy fascination with the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

As I listened to my patients during consultations, many of them mentioned Sarkozy by name,” Dr. Hefez said. “He’s penetrated some of their deepest fantasies. I noticed all this passion in people speaking of him, and I thought there is something particular about this man — he’s like a reflection of us in the mirror.”

The French project themselves onto Mr. Sarkozy, too, Dr. Hefez said.

“He’s the incarnation of the postmodern man, obsessed with himself, turned toward pleasure, autonomous and narcissistic,” the psychiatrist said. “And he exhibits his joys and sorrows, all his private life, his sentimental doubts and pleasures. He represents the individualism of the society to the extreme, that it’s the individual who counts, not the society.”…

Television covers Mr. Sarkozy’s every gesture, in both homage and mockery, itself an effort to create distance from the phenomenon that it perpetuates and magnifies. It is all part of what the French have come to call the “pipolisation” of political life, a term, presumably derived from People magazine, that refers to the idolatry of celebrities and soap opera. Dr. Hefez considers the trend an example of “democracy turning against itself, as Tocqueville foresaw.”…

Matthew Yglesias finds himself in the extremely awkward position of having to praise Tim Russert after having damned him mere months ago.

It’s a bit hard to know what to say when an important public figure whose work you didn’t really care for passes. … Nobody can become as important as Russert was without doing some stuff that some people think was bad. [Ooooh, they did "stuff" that "some" people "think" was "bad," so that "bad stuff" warrants articles by pompous whippersnappers titled "The Unbearable Inanity of Tim Russert"?   ---ed.] Thus, when The Atlantic asked me to do a Current item on Russert’s passing, I thought I’d take a mixed approach that doesn’t back down from criticism, while trying to be magnanimous in recognizing his considerable accomplishments.

How very magnanimous from the deep new-media thinker (and, I can’t help but note) supporter of Barack “Mr. New Politics” Obama.

Yglesias’s commenters need to be dressed down, says Ann Althouse, who isn’t normally given to policing.

I think the whippersnapper should produce a respectable body of work before he casually slings arrows at writers whom he attacks as somehow unfairly privileged [e.a.]:

Similarly, given Packer’s dystopian vision of American discourse, it’s hard to understand how Packer’s book, The Assassin’s Gate, sold so many copies and attracted such wide praise or how Packer came to have a job with the most prestigious magazine in the country – a magazine which published a lot of basically pro-war material in 2002 and 2003 and went on to vociferously denounce George W. Bush in 2004.

But there are peasants with pitchforks everywhere we turn these days.

As the celebrity commodification of Barack Obama continues apace, Matthew Yglesias, for one, is made increasingly uncomfortable.

He objects, mutedly, to the shameless self-promotion of celebrities who want a piece of Obama’s action:

I think it’s nice that a certain number of rich celebrities like progressive causes in the United States and certainly I encourage them to both use their richness to provide direct financial support to such causes … But to what extent do they really need to be putting themselves forward as the public face of a political candidacy?

Yglesias doesn’t say it outright, but he seems worried that the”celebrification of progressive politics” diminishes the importance of politics (and, by extension, the policies that politicians are supposed to deliver for us citizens).

Perhaps he’s right—particularly when it comes to this candidate, who  claims that he’s the “real deal,” someone who didn’t “cash in” but chose instead to work as a community organizer. The Oprah, Hollywood, and Camelot  imprimatur, and now the Mac vote, seem to take something away from the “authenticity” of such a candidate, no? These are conflicting image messages, aren’t they?

Yglesias’s commenters, however, see no problem with the different kinds of pitches for Obama:

This is just basic brand building. Target a demographic and associate your brand with people/places/things that the targeted group admires. It’s a bit naive to expect campaigns not to engage in this kind of thing when it’s to their advantage.

Posted by Chris | February 4, 2008 8:42 AM

I’m with Yglesias.

An embrace of the culture of cool is not a good sign for the Obama campaign if it is serious about putting its candidate in the White House.  I think the Obama campaign has fallen in love with “free media”—and itself—to its detriment.

Whoever thought up and produced this Obama video is a PRopaganda^TMgenius. Not that the under-30 set isn’t entirely in Obama’s corner anyway, but this pretty much seals the deal in terms of putting Obama in the territory of “hip.”***

Though the effectiveness of the message-delivery system can’t be disputed, there is an obvious weakness in this kind of campaigning—and this kind of candidate—as Jeff Jarvis points out: It’s all rhetoric.

To me, this only underscores the notion that Obama’s campaign is the most rhetorical of the bunch: speeches and slogans so neat they can fit in 4/4 time.

I agree. The Obama campaign more and more begins to resemble a celebrity marketing campaign, as I mentioned here:

The way Barack Obama is being covered by the media and the blogosphere, he’s not a political candidate anymore—he’s a celebrity. He doesn’t have political followers—he’s got fans. He doesn’t have a political platform—he’s got a one-word slogan—”change” [which works, ’cause “change is good,” just like Nissan says, right?]. He makes narcissists feel so good about themselves.

So: the slogan has changed—now it’s “Yes, we can”—but the marketing pitch is the same: Obama’s the one.

Howard Kurtz tried to burst this bubble on Reliable Sources this morning [e.a.]:

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HOWARD KURTZ, HOST (voice over): Conjuring Camelot. The media gets swept away over Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama. Are journalists promoting the rookie senator as the next JFK? …

KURTZ: The presidential campaign is a blur now, all sound bites and snippets, a 22-state dash to Super Tuesday just two days from now. John McCain has been boosted by winning Florida, by the backing of his formal rival, Rudy Giuliani, and by favorable coverage from the reporters he talked to for hours every day.

Hillary Clinton claimed victory in Florida, a beauty contest where no Democrats campaigned because of the a dispute within the party, but the press wasn’t buying her spin.

And Barack Obama, well, the pundits have been comparing him to JFK since he first started flirting with running. And when Ted Kennedy and Carolina Kennedy endorsed him this week, the media somehow magically transported us to this moment in 1961. …

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN F. KENNEDY, FMR. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Let the word go forth from this time and place — to friend and foe alike — that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Every anchor and correspondent, it seemed, picked up that metaphor and ran with it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC NEWS: On the broadcast tonight from Washington, passing the torch.

KATIE COURIC, CBS NEWS: Tonight, passing the torch.

CHRIS MATTHEWS, MSNBC: The torch gets passed, the Clintons get passed by.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Barack Obama touched by the legacy of Camelot.

HARRY SMITH, CBS NEWS: Ted and Caroline set to hit the campaign trail after they announced the heir to Camelot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: Why have the media gone haywire over this Kennedy endorsement?

The consensus of Kurtz’s panel? Because it makes for a great story. (regardless of what it means, if anything).

The media is all about storytelling. It is not about “the news.” Infotainment rules.

Beyond that: you can’t burst a successful PRopaganda^TM gambit with a lot of words. The only way to beat it is to create an even bigger, better, and eye-catching one.

The campaign ‘08 Battle of Iconography goes on.

————-

*** “He’s got soul,” said one of my son’s friends. Being New Yorkers, with everything that’s entailed (that is: living in a bubble of harmony and tolerance … especially now that Giuliani is no longer our mayor), my (young adult) kids and their friends don’t form a representative sample of youth, of course. But they serve as a bellwether of the attitude of their generation.

They feel betrayed. They feel that they were lied to. They want a reason to believe.

Sarkozy loses it, or abandons himself to the moment—take your pick. A tabloid tale made in heaven, courtesy of the Daily Mail:

Sarkozy’s fiancee ‘pregnant’ as ex Cecilia delivers blistering attack on couple

Sarkozy is “ridiculous, badly behaved and not fit to be president” Cecilia Sarkozy says in a new book, adding for good measure that the women in his life are just a “bunch of slappers” (or des petasses fardees, as the French would have it).

Even the president’s female political colleagues do not escape her barbed tongue: they are just “boring wallflowers, and now that there is no First Lady, he needs to surround himself with pretty young things dressed in Dior”.

It has taken just a few short weeks for the revenge of Cecilia to begin.

Sarkozy, 52, began dating Bruni, 40, just one month after his divorce from Cecilia following a 12-year marriage and his election last May as France’s new president.

Now it is Carla who stays with the president at the Elysee Palace and has been given a £10,000 ring - embarrassingly similar to one he once bought Cecilia.

Very juicy and totally sensationalistic as told by the Mail.

In the New York Times this past week, Sarkozy himself suggested that he’s being very 21st-century:

Sarkozy Says Press Is Free to Ignore His Personal Life

“I didn’t want to lie,” Mr. Sarkozy said of his romance with Ms. Bruni. “And I am breaking with a deplorable tradition in our political life — that of hypocrisy, that of lies.” …

“Really, truly, and it is very satisfying for me, France is moving forward,” he said, his words tumbling out in incomplete sentences. “What was hidden under a mantle of secrecy for one of my predecessors — whom I will not judge — everyone must live as he sees fit.”

It’s nutty, but I’m gonna have to go with Sarkozy here, because of his real defense, which he said just after “everyone must live as he sees fit”:

“Life is so difficult and so painful.”

Indeed, and he wants to feel good. He’s got the right to do it. However, as the much more sensationalistic but also more informative Daily Mail piece tell us, Sarkozy’s behavior affects not only his popularity at home but also France’s relations abroad:

Aside from any pregnancy, a speedy wedding would also mark the end of headaches for protocol planners in foreign countries Sarkozy plans to visit, though he might still be a bachelor when he goes to Saudi Arabia and India later this month.

Dominique Moisin, of the French Institute of International Relations, szaid: “The sooner they marry, the sooner the presidency’s dignity will be restored. …
Sarkozy was disappointed that the Pope declined to receive him with his new girlfriend. Under Vatican protocol it was deemed “inappropriate” for a head of state to meet the pontiff on an official visit, accompanied by a girlfriend.

Meanwhile, the Indian government, which is receiving Sarkozy as a guest of honour at the Republic Day Parade in New Delhi on January 24, has released a half-hearted statement, saying: “It is for the French to decide whether Miss Bruni should be treated as First Lady or not”.

It will be fascinating to see what happens when Sarkozy arrives in Britain for the state visit in March. Since the Entente Cordiale - the end of centuries of war between Britain and France - was signed in 1904 every French leader on a state visit has been accompanied by a First Lady.

So, yeah. He’s got a right to personal happiness, but we’ll see if he manages to hold on to the respect that a politician with his global ambitions needs in order to effect his agenda.

Or perhaps that time has passed into oblivion.

We do live in interesting times, don’t we?

The Flack passes along the news (from Newsweek) that al Qaeda’s main spokesman, Zawahiri, feeling burned by the media, is trying another tack—he’s now making himself available for long-distance interviews by journalists, via email questions submitted to al Qaeda’s media arm, As-Sahaab (The Cloud).

Newsweek rightly labels this a publicity tactic, and it’s a shrewd one, because it garners al Qaeda a different kind of global media attention from what they’re used to [e.a.]:

This is the first time Al Qaeda has made a formal call to journalists, although it will not be the first time the radical Islamic group has granted interviews to Western media. Counterterrorism experts believe that the posting is genuine and that it is part of Al Qaeda’s evolving tactics to use the Web as part of its propaganda arsenal. “This is a continuation of the efforts by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership to push themselves forward in the public viewpoint,” says Maj. Reid Sawyer, editor of “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and a lecturer of terrorism studies at Columbia University

Zawahiri hopes to put himself on equal footing with world leaders by doing an “Al Qaeda Press Avail,” as the Flack calls it. As a PR pro, he’s calling bullshit on it [e.a.].

By feigning media access, the organization cultivates an image of civilized engagement among the unsuspecting masses, all the while perpetrating or planning unspeakable actions.

“Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst now in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point describes this as playing to the YouTube generation. ‘It completely fits Al Qaeda’s communications strategy over the past two years, which is how to get people more invested in the movement.’”

And Zawahiri is not alone in gaming the court of public opinion by playing the “freedom of the press” card. A free media today seems more of a propaganda tool and less of a requirement to qualify as a modern society.

The Flack is certainly right to note that all kinds of international players are now gaming the court of public opinion. I wouldn’t characterize our free media as a propaganda tool, though, but rather as a rich propaganda outlet or channel-–one that the world’s most mischievous and/or bad actors (dictators and/or theocratic totalitarians) are very savvy about exploiting via PRopaganda^TM (PR-fueled “dramatic narratives”) because they are so savvy about actual propaganda in their own autocracies, dictatorships, and/or totalitarian theocracies.

Influencing public opinion is a black art in totalitarian societies and dictatorships. It is often subtle. (Even autocrats and theocrats find that it is much more effective to persuade the people to come around to their point of view than it is to have to police them and punish them all the time. Understandably, people get impatient and upset with that kind of violence and will try to revolt. So if you want to suppress them and keep them pacified, you have to be less obvious about your control over them, more refined, more convincing. Dictatorships that want to last need the silent consent of their people, so they spend an inordinate amount of time building theories and revisionist histories and other narratives that “justify” their existence. These narratives are constantly “streamed” through their societies—via textbooks, classrooms, party conference papers, academia, and of course the media, which is controlled by the state.)

Of course the world’s bad guys are going to have superlative media skills.

The Flack writes:

Think Putin, Ahmadinejad, Assad and all the other despots who’ve gutted their nation’s free media, without any real retribution.

Well, not quite. These men haven’t gutted their nations’ free media. What free media? Iran has no free media. Syria has no free media. Russia has only a nominally free media since Putin took power.

The absence of freedom (of the press, among other things) in these countries—and the (dictatorial, theocratic, autocratic, or totalitarian) mode of power their leaders hold over their people—is exactly the problem with them.

It’s important that American media organizations and media-related professionals understand how easy it is for them to be used as propaganda outlets by the world’s bad actors.

But if execs like CNN’s Jonathan Klein, for example, are any indication, our media conglomerates are so uninterested in the content of what they air (as long as it brings in plenty of dough) that they notoriously turn a blind eye to the beyond-the-news-cycle impact of glorifying, say, Vladimir Putin:

Platon for TIME

[corrected to note that Damon is the Sexiest Man ALIVE!, not merely the Sexiest Man of the Year, as I originally suggested]

When People magazine says you’re the Sexiest Man Alive

you are, like it or not, the Sexiest Man Alive.

When Damon learned he was chosen — he turned them down! Damon wrote People a “fabulous” letter explaining that he doesn’t normally talk about his personal life. He said he was blushing when he read that he had been picked. While he got a huge kick out of the nod, he didn’t feel worthy, he said. “You just gave an aging suburban dad ego boost of a lifetime,” he wrote.

But People persisted, and decided Damon was still its “Man.” In fact, the letter ended up backfiring for Damon — since it reflected all the things People’s editors love about him, including his “irresistible sense of humor,” his dedication to his family, and his “heart-melting humility.” Damon wound up giving People permission to reprint the letter, in this week’s issue.

Got that, Matt Damon? After ten years of trying to avoid the pitfalls of the fame game, ready or not, here they come!

The New York Times wonders if candidates are giving us too much information. Then the paper lets a surrogate act as its mouthpiece:

“I’m all for democratizing dialogue, but this is just much too much information,” Mr. Begala said. “It’s appalling, really.”

Hmmm. Appalling? I wouldn’t go that far. I see all public figures—from politicians to CEOs to movie stars to sports sensations to news anchors to talking heads—as self-conscious performers. They’re in front of the camera—of course they’re performers! Plus, no one can create a public profile in today’s world unless s/he’s got good visuals.

Bottom line: they’re not my cuppa, but they’re here to stay, because as long as there are public figures and cameras, there will be performers

Here’s what I had to say back in February:

Gawker reports on a “Firm Potent Leader with Plenty of Stamina”:

The Post ruined all our breakfasts with their cover this morning (seriously: “Judi gushes as Rudi rushes in”?? Ewwwww!!!)

Check out the placement of her hand on his cheek. And her hair, cascading just so. I’m going to throw up.

I also once posted a picture of The Kiss:

And for a while I was obsessed with making fun of the PDAs of the Chief Monkey of Iran:

 

the many loves of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

July 31, 2006

June 2006

update: Gawker is wondering why the dearth of Owen coverage on TMZ. Good Question! Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus is wondering why all the focus is on Kate’s tragedy. ‘Cause, Mickey, if she’s all sad about it, that makes her a good person rather than the slut she appeared to be in the rumors that were published about her at the time of Owen’s little accident.

Last week, amid the instantaneous global release of the most intimate details surrounding the presumed suicide attempt of the actor Owen Wilson, I wondered what had happened to Hollywood that there wasn’t even one layer of PR protection around this highly bankable star when the ravenous celebrity press got hold of the details.

Today, it looks like—finally—somebody is at home, even if what follows sounds like a fairy tale called “Owen Wilson’s Wonderful Recovery”:

Wes Anderson: Owen Wilson “Doing Very Well”

Actor Owen Wilson is in surprisingly good spirits after attempting to commit suicide on August 26, according to his friend, director Wes Anderson.

“Obviously he has been through a lot this week,” said Anderson, who directed the actor in his latest film The Darjeeling Limited.

“I can tell you he has been doing very well, he has been making us laugh.”

Let us agree from the outset that in the real world where we all live, Owen Wilson cannot possibly be doing “very well.” He was abusing various drugs and alcohol and was reportedly despondent or enraged shortly before he attempted to take his life a week or so ago. Only on another planet—let’s call it Bizarro Hollywood World—could this man be doing “very well.” He is human, after all. Right?

Wrong! He’s a star. Of course he’s doing well! In Bizarro Hollywood World, suicides get better overnight, with the help of their loving friends, family, and business partners.

So this news of Owen Wilson’s fabulous recovery is what I often refer to as PRopaganda ^TM: “dramatic realities” or “dramatic narratives” spun (by PR meisters) from a few legitimate details of a given celebrity’s autobiography and then embroidered with fan-pleasing details. The story-weavers get a peg to hang a plausible tale on (in Wilson’s case, he’s a comic actor, so when he’s being normal and not suicidal, we would expect him to be making people laugh) and run with it, till those of us who want to believe it, ’cause we loooove Owen, actually believe it.

[There's an entire academic and non-academic literature about this stuff, if you're interested. Start with Joshua Gamson's Claims to Fame---a fascinating read. But read it at your own risk: You will never love a celebrity in quite the same way again after you finish it, 'cause you'll know that you've been deliberately seduced. You've been had.]

Helpfully, in today’s WaPo, Shankar Vedantam tells us all about the stubborn human propensity to believe “myths” over reality:

The conventional response to myths and urban legends is to counter bad information with accurate information. But the new psychological studies show that denials and clarifications, for all their intuitive appeal, can paradoxically contribute to the resiliency of popular myths.

You should read the whole thing, but here’s the most fascinating bit:

[T]he mind’s bias does affect many people, especially those who want to believe the myth for their own reasons, or those who are only peripherally interested and are less likely to invest the time and effort needed to firmly grasp the facts.

Have favorite myths (e.g., good triumphs over evil)? Not likely to invest the time and effort need to grasp the facts? That would describe most of us, except when the subject matter is our passionate interest and/or hobby. We’re too busy to pay minute attention. Which is what gives marketers of all stripes—not to mention potential propagandists—their opening:

Clever manipulators can take advantage of this tendency.

Yes indeed. They most certainly can.This is where clever public relations comes in—in order to fight a damaged reputation, you’ve got to try to avoid repeating the claims made against you. Vedantam explains the paradox:

“If someone says, ‘I did not harass her,’ I associate the idea of harassment with this person,” said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. “Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person’s name again.

So how to you refute a false claim or reclaim a damaged reputation?

[R]ather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) recently did during a marathon congressional debate, that “Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did,” Mayo said it would be better to say something like, “Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks” — and not mention Hussein at all.

Edward Bernays, the “father of PR”, recommended this tactic. Don’t refute. Fight PR with more PR. This stuff is all around us—in every corner of public life—all the time. Observe, and you’ll see.

By the way, the New York Post has a ways to go to catch up with the rosy picture quoted above about Wilson’s recovery. According to the Post, Wilson is “on the mend.” But he looks like shit.

Now, that’s more like it—slow and easy. Extend the life of the story, give it more room for endless ups and downs (for the next ten years, if Wilson is really unlucky).

The Post, of course, is the undisputed master of PRopaganda ^TM.

Class dismissed.

Here he comes to save the day. (Single-handedly!) Mighty Anderson is on the way:

No two ways about it, the Fourth Estate is on life-support — and the public is eager to pull the plug. Once regarded as the noblest of professions, journalism has toppled from the heights of David Halberstam to the muck of Judith Miller.

Still, there’s one decidedly silver lining in this clouded sky — Anderson Cooper, the prematurely gray, ultra-soigné Anderson Cooper, whose award-winning coverage of everything from Bosnia to Katrina has been heralded as creating a new genre of journalist: the “emo reporter.” Capable not only of dealing with disasters both natural (New Orleans) and man-made (Somalia), but doing so with something resembling identifiable human empathy, this feisty yet elegant man-about-the-globe has quickly become the sine qua non of reportorial style. And what complements a celebrated style better than a celebrity scent?

Hey, wait. AC wouldn’t really do that, would he?

Initially Cooper turned him down,

Whew. That’s better. It must be all that good breeding I mentioned a while back. Hold on, though. “Initially” he turned it down? Then what happened?

…  but Mom (that’s Gloria Vanderbilt to you) thinks it’s a swell idea. And being the Marie Curie of celebrity product placement, she certainly knows what she’s talking about. So Cooper is reportedly going to give it some thought.

And why the hell not? It’s not as if anyone respects TV “news” personalities anymore anyway.

The ten-year anniversary of Diana’s death is coming up, so I guess it’s time for the British media to tear down her rival:

A documentary depicting the Duchess of Cornwall as a ‘woman of easy virtue’ whose lost virginity prevented her marrying Prince Charles in her youth is to be shown by Channel 4.

The salacious discussion of Camilla’s unsuitability to marry the heir to the throne will be shown tomorrow night.

Channel 4 has already faced a public outcry over plans to broadcast a photograph of Princess Diana dying in her mangled car as part of another documentary next week.

Insensitive revelations about the woman Prince Charles finally married in Windsor two years ago will doubtless be viewed with distaste by members of the Royal Family.

Doubtless.

Older readers will of course remember that Prince Charles not so long ago told Camilla that he wanted to “live inside her trousers,” perhaps as a tampon.

Indulging in my Mickey Kaus fix this morning, I was challenged to click a link.

Booker Prize: Ed Rollins and Arianna Huffington, together again! … [For some of why this is a potentially tense pairing, click here] … 2:01 A.M.

At that second link, I was pleased to find a juicy but very inside-the-Beltway blog post by Richard Bradley at HuffPo on the way-way-back backstory of Arianna Huffington’s apparent grudge against Tim Russert. I’m not very interested in that, but I was delighted to find a link to this, from 1996.

I forgot that Richard Bradley was at one time known as Richard Blow and that he was an editor at George. You can read all about the controversy surrounding his book American Son (about JFK Jr.) here.

One Amazon reviewer summarizes it [e.a.]:

This book is worth a read for those who just can’t get enough of the Kennedys, or about how “George” tried to make politics palatable to a mainstream audience by injecting celebrities into the editorial mix.

I wonder what JFK Jr. would make of this brave new media world. So much has changed. It’s hard to fathom that it’s only been 8 years since he died.

Via ETP, hard evidence that politics is just that—the greatest show on earth. And proof that at a certain level inside the Beltway, after dark, all of those harsh words rendered in print and harsher judgments barked into microphones are left behind. Because at that level they’re civilized people, you see. (Eric Alterman thinks otherwise—he thinks New York is more forgiving after dark than Washington—as he mentions in this fascinating episode of bloggingheads.tv, about which more another time.)

The photo below, featuring Paul Wolfowitz and Arianna Huffington, *** was taken this past Saturday night at a reception before the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. To read the press last week and over the weekend, you’d think that Paul Wolfowitz is fighting for his very life as the long knives at the World Bank slash him and his girlfriend.

[[ Indeed, he may not survive this attempted takedown. I don't feel particularly sorry for him. I am spitting mad on behalf of his girlfriend, however. And if any case ever cried out for attention from feminists, this is it: an accomplished woman is forced to leave her job, where she's up for a promotion, because her boyfriend, who has nothing at all to do with her work, is appointed the head of the institution she works for. But you would have to put aside other political considerations ("Are you now or have you ever been a Neocon?"---addresssed by Garance Franke-Ruta in