This is not your grandfather's media world. Politicians can be found virtually everywhere, and all the time, offering a crazy quilt of mediated political discourse, pitching, defending, attacking, externalizing, internalizing, hustling and mugging. And did I mention the diaspora of Internet political venues and blogs and YouTube reruns with its video gotchas?
These venues all demand of politicians and political candidates a skill set of how to be telegenic to both the eye and the ear. Clearly Sarah Palin and Barack and Michelle Obama have brought working the medium of television down to a science. Poor John McCain (and Cindy too, if truth be told); TV is not their friend, particularly not of John when he's working from a script or teleprompter or he's in a debate, regardless of its format (McCain simply does not own the Town Hall forum regardless of what pundits led us and each other believe). When he's under pressure, he becomes a case study in failure, in how not to be on television, in why not to share a split screen, and why not to look as angry and mean spirited as you really are.
Cool Obama vs. heebie jeebie McCain was not what the media doctor ordered. Too bad for McCain there is no real media guru around when he was needed, someone like Ronald Reagan's Michael Deaver. But, reaching for lemonade, if McCain put together a montage of his TV debate appearances under fire, he could easily sell a million copies to would-be candidates who want to know what to avoid, how and why to avoid it. Maybe a little product placement would be in order, to introduce the aspiring politician to the charms of Paxil.
The McCain Tapes. What a treasure trove!
Television and the gusher of highly professional documentary movies by such companies as MoveOn.org and Brave New Films, capture wonderful and immediate glimpses into bright lights, big mistakes, and bad advice. So do the parade of books about the misadventures of the Bush administration in the last eight years. But above all, it is the medium of television that is the principal teaching machine for those who want to be taught.
The Internet may be the powerful new kid on the media block, but it's not yet the 800 pound magillah gorilla in the house, at least when it comes to politics. Without television, YouTube (the noun and the verb), would have much less to say about this election. From news shows to talk shows, to entertainment sitcoms, television provides a rich format of venues and opportunities for politicians to reach out and touch the public.
If we put aside Palin's sudden bout with uncontrollable winking at just about anyone in wink shot, and her clear assertion of evasiveness as her birthright, the VP debate was an evenly matched battle. Biden won on content while Palin swept the 90 minutes with her image management, directed for her fans, groupies and adoring constituency of Dudes, Hockey Moms, patriots and right thinking Americans.
Palin, like Obama, looks pretty darn good on camera and her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention captured the nation's imagination and instigated either dreams or nightmares in the viewing public. Clearly the camera adores her. Just as clearly, Palin adores the camera, and she adores the spotlight, whether as a good foot soldier or a rogue VP candidate who chafes at leashes. Which brings us back to Sarah Palin's appearance on SNL. Since the convention, the closest she has come to commandeering the medium, to colonizing planet television, "was when she good-naturedly chair-danced along to a rap song satirizing her candidacy on "Saturday Night Live."
As I said in Part 1 of this blog, Palin's appearance on SNL invited a spectrum of reaction mostly critical from the Democratic side of the political ledger but with many conservative pundits like Peggy Noonan, George Will, David Brooks and Kathleen Parker, worrying just how low the Palin limbo can go before she breaks her back and that of the Republican party.
For many complex thinking Republicans that damage was done soon after Sarah's rocketing TVQ and poll ratings began to run out of fuel with the increasing weight of missteps, misstatements and a mystifying mélange of divisive pronouncements compounded by a stunning and persistent ignorance of constitutional law and provisions. For the rest of the political right, however, Palin (and maybe Huckabee) might just be the future of the GOP, at least if they have anything to say about it.
I must admit that I was charmed by Palin's willingness to spoof herself on TV, her willingness to be a good sport. As I said, she loves the camera and the camera loves her. What were my fellow Obama supporters talking about when they opined from many mouths that the appearance was another misstep for Palin; another example of her vacuousness; of her obliviousness to the impact of her verbal antics as Goldie Hawn always seemed to be on Laugh-In, 40 years earlier. Doesn't she know people were laughing at her and not with her?
Maybe, maybe not. The irritating thing is, though, that my fellow progressives (read: liberals) are unable to find anything well done by Palin; every Palin perception is through a prism darkly. Take that smug, self-indulgent Internet anchor, Cenk Uygur, on The Young Turks site, for example. He appears convinced that his mocking of a video of Palin playing (admittedly) mediocre flute during the now-viral, now-infamous 1984 Beauty Pageant, is really more annoying, absurd and pathetic than is his own adolescently leering and derisive commentary. I don't think so, Cenk. The devil should always be given her due.
The fact is, Sarah P isn't soon going away from the public eye, especially not her public's eye. If the GOP stays in its pragmatic, amoral, end justifies the means mind set, Sarah P can be the rain maker that McCain wasn't and that Dubya, the Inverse Pied Piper, ultimately fell far short of being, fell cataclysmically short after his brain-gut and his fellow shredders of the constitution brought the rats home to the GOP mansion of power and then watched it crumble. If she is one of the anointed in the post-Bush, post-McCain GOP, the P in Sarah's name will stand for "power."
We underestimate Sarah at our peril. We underestimate her skilled, media savvy synergizing with the transformative power of TV. She didn't major in journalism with an emphasis in broadcast news to kill time during the winter solstice.
Remember the movie, A Face in the Crowd, a film I discussed in an earlier blog? Like the Andy Griffith "Lonesome Rhodes" character in that film, Palin is another country charmer with demagoguery on the mind, one who can game the media with the best of them. Yes, her missteps abound. But so do her steps up. She handily bestrides a precipitous learning curve once she quickly found and set about manipulating her audience. Governor Palin knew exactly what she was doing on SNL and on every other live or TV appearance she avails herself of when she's scripted or in control of the composition of the audiences, of questions posed, and of the plasticity of the ground rules.
Sarah charms to dissemble and to disarm, both her friends and her enemies. We mustn't forget this when we take the measure of this politician, nor forget the lean and hungry look that often peeks out from behind her well-manicured mask, a look that quickly scurries back into hiding behind calming, country colloquialisms.
In the third and final part of this pre-election skein, we will look at the real danger of Sarah Palin and other GOP soldiers, the right wing brigade, the dispensers of their peculiar brand of down home, radical chic. Beauty, charm and a pound of buttery "aw shucks" obviously can cloud the mind and disjoint reality testing in many who will forever look for gifts from strangers. To them I say, be wary. Be very wary. And if by chance or chicanery the Palin- McCain ticket takes the election, I say be afraid. Be very afraid. And that means you too, Mr. McCain.
PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO VOTE
