Paris as Premonition

We've all seen the clip. But who dares to herald the future it foretells? It is only a matter of time before celebrity management, our thirst for having it all ways at once, and the demands of democratic politics converge to make more-perfect-Paris candidates as natural in Tomorrowland as the Celebrities of Sacrifice were in Postwar Yesterday. 

The social position of 'celebrity' confers a major disadvantage and a major advantage: an image problem combined with a willingness to do whatever it takes to mitigate it. That increasingly means a performing acts associated with a bigger heart and a bigger brain -- like caring about politics as our most powerful means to alleviate suffering, and memorizing the lines necessary to at least match political celebrities on believability. Paris Hilton is clearly more articulate about energy than George W. Bush: she's a professional and a quick study. While Bush can barely manage in a suit at the Presidential desk, Hilton can hold forth -- or do something like a lifelike replica of holding forth -- on offshore drilling in a cutaway onesie and heels. If the marginal benefit of having a leader who's the brains of the operation keeps diminishing, why not go for the gold-plated bimbo? All she has to do is perform well, and Hollywood culls the weak.

There is no reason why the natural needs and talents of celebrities will not flow together with the natural needs and talents of machine politics...none at all...as Ahhhnuld knows well enough. But the Terminator was a test model, as any fan of the Terminator saga knows...and as any Terminator fan knows, the way deep and eternal truths of human destiny are known by the prophets who preach them, the evolutionary arc of the killing machine goes from man to androgynous mercury blob to gold-plated bimbo. Or, rather -- because the gold-plated bimbo has evolved, too -- gold-plated, well-spoken, bi-but-married-a-guy symbolic sexpot. 

Loken/Johannson '12: you heard it here first.

Comments

[Mark]

Revelations abound about how the Bush White House ordered the CIA to fake a letter linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida, and all you can comment on is the Paris Hilton video? Come on now... If this was a Democratic White House doing these things, conservatives would be frothing at the mouth for heads on a platter! Impeachment now!
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2008/08/06/suskind/?source=newsletter

[southpaw]

While Bush can barely manage in a suit at the Presidential desk, Hilton can hold forth -- or do something like a lifelike replica of holding forth -- on offshore drilling in a cutaway onesie and heels. If the marginal benefit of having a leader who's the brains of the operation keeps diminishing, why not go for the gold-plated bimbo? All she has to do is perform well, and Hollywood culls the weak.

Is it me, or are you positing that the reason we're stuck with George W. Bush's communication skills is that he--George W. Bush--is the, um, "brains of the operation"?

Did you mean to say that?

Let's recall how W got started in politics:

In November 1973, [George H.W.] Bush asked Rove to take a set of car keys to his son George W. Bush, who was visiting home during a break from Harvard Business School. It was the first time the two met. "Huge amounts of charisma, swagger, cowboy boots, flight jacket, wonderful smile, just charisma - you know, wow", Rove recalled years later.

[James Poulos]

Indeed. For "If...keeps," read "Since...has kept." Meaning the worth of a self-sufficiently sharp President has been diminishing for some time already, before Bush.

[Asp]

Britney for President? Bring it on!
http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2008/07/britney-for-president.html

[Asp]

Britney for President? Bring it on!
http://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2008/07/britney-for-president.html