paris for president

Music: David Helping: Sleeping on the Edge of the World (1999)

After seeing the McCain "celebrity" ad, co-founder of FunnyorDie.com Adam McKay decided to approach Paris Hilton and ask if she wanted to film a response. He pitched the idea of a counter-montage: images of The Golden Girls, Yoda, the Crypt Keeper, and Colonel Sanders would fade into one of John McCain, all of which to the voice-over, "he's the oldest celebrity in the world, like, super-old . . . but, is he ready to lead?" Paris would then appear and explain she's also a celebrity and therefore running for president. She would explain her own bi-partisan energy policy, say "see you at the debates, bitches," and suggest a pop star as a running mate. She would close by suggesting she would paint the white house pink, and then would blow the spectator (a kiss).

Paris loved the idea, and filmed the bit while vacationing in the Hamptons over the course of three hours. Wearing a revealing bathing suit. And yummy fake eyelashes. And trying to keep her delicious left lazy eye from being lazy. And creating an inviting vector to the center of the screen---and everything else---with her long long lean-long legs (and if you get that lyrical reference, I owe you a drink). But then, when she moves to discuss policy, there will only be a dead-on head shot---so that we take her seriously, you know, without her half-naked body all out there.

This is the most brilliant political publicity I've seen since Rev. Wright's speech at the Press Club.

Of course, it's no secret that I've been a fan of Paris for some years. Six, to be precise, though for some reason my blog posts about her only go back to 2006. Admittedly, I cannot discern if my feelings for Paris are hetero- or homoerotic (I suppose that's the kick inside), but this is (a little) beside the point for this evening's post. The montage is not a complex as McCain's, as clearly something much less subtle is at work here. So, my jollies aside, what is the significance of this "response?" What is the rhetorical significance?

In the debate world an argument that we used to advance (and that probably still is) was known as "perception is key" (PIK). The idea behind PIK was that the "truth" was irrelevant, only what folks perceived to be true was the key (sounds like the market, no?). That is, the signified didn't matter, only the referent assumed by a given audience---something assumed to be external to, you know, "empty rhetoric." The notion plays into the realist imbecility I spoke about in the previous post: so invested is the perceiver in extra-linguistic, extra-representational "truth" that the source or vehicle of that truth doesn't matter. "The truth is out there," as the X Files motto goes. The McCain Borg knows this, which is why today's hater-ad goes something like this:

The truth is way, way, out there now. "Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?" Clearly such a question means the McCain camp is relatively unflapped by the Hilton spoof or the controversy surrounding their crusade against celebrity. Why? Because she only reinforced the central message: Obama is all style, not substance. Although contexualized differently---and in a way I will suggest is subversively cynical below---Paris unwittingly echoed McCain's message. In short, the McCain Machine is betting on the referential idiocy of priming, the same logic that the campaign against celebrity critiques!

Ok, ok, you're right: circulation is not the same thing as priming. But the logic is one of repetition, and I would suggest it works similarly in both cases. As recent research by social scientists is starting to bear-out, myths, misinformation, urban legends, and the like are perpetuated by attempts to correct them! Not in every case, of course, but in general our brain "reacts" to corrections to disinformation in ways that recall the original memory. I just know my colleagues in political communication have a similar theory (it's too late in the evening to call them and ask). Hilton's critique of McCain's ad ironically perpetuates the original message.

And what of celebrity? Paris is an excellent example of a kind of embodied priming because she is routinely described as being "famous for being famous." In other words, she circulates (or rather, her image circulates, and if these collapse we get hysteria or psychosis, a la St. Britney)---Paris Hilton is a signifier. The more we see her, the more she revolves, and the more we see of her (um, in like many senses). She floats about, scantily clad, from screen to screen.

So in both cases, the circulation of mistruth (Obama is not only a celebrity, duh!) and celebrity operates on a logic of repetition that, well, that Daddy Burke tells us creates pleasure. Here we happen upon the ritual aspects of the political campaign, the rhythms, the beatings. Now, abruptly, here's a definition from The Oxford English Dictionary:

1. Due observance of rites and ceremonies; pomp, solemnity. Obs.
2. 2. A solemn rite or ceremony, a celebration.
3. 3. The condition of being much extolled or talked about; famousness, notoriety.
4. 4. concr. A person of celebrity; a celebrated person: a public character.

The definition is for "celebrity," of course, and I think it's interesting the term's obsolete origins refer to some sort of uptight ritual. Rituals are repeated, of course. Here we go again.

But with a difference. Paris gets to break with the solemnity and point out a fact that seems lost on the McCain campaign. The "old white-haired dude" is a celebrity too. She gets to point out the irony of the advertisement, if not the outright absurdity of some sort of referential plenitude. What Paris reminds us, with her "hotness," is that politics is ultimately about people and with whom they form attachments, not principles. Principles only adhere when we have someone to associate them with.

Or to put this in other language: there is a thing, an object, that keeps up the force of repetition and circulation. A person. The signifier may go all by itself---the letter may have agency---but it needs bodies for meaning. Obama is a celebrity because he is a certain kind of politician; people faint at his rallies, swoon to his voice. The didn't do that with Dubya. Hilton is a celebrity not simply for being a celebrity, but rather, because there is also something about her that is appealing. To me, she is hot, to others, she's someone to laugh at (I would still say underneath that is an attraction of sorts). She stays in circulation because there's something about her person that, say, that bad signing guy from American Idol doesn't have. Let's just call it: charisma. It's a person thing, not language.

And as I've said, McCain won't be winning any wet t-shirt contests. So what of his person, his charisma? He's trying to continue his circulation by attacking the attractiveness or appeal of Obama (and Paris). This will only reconfirm his followers, not make new converts. For new converts---this mysterious undecided---he's going to also need to push the need for a stern father (his persona) a bit more, a firm but loving father (paging Dr. Lakoff).

The flip dismissal and mockery of political campaign ads by Hilton and her new friends says to me this election is really already decided, that these ads are largely superfluous. Indeed, what makes the ad funny to so many is that everyone knows to trust political ads like generic toilet paper. In this ad Paris sounds competent and smart. Hmm? Perhaps she has always been? Perhaps the ad only makes her seem so? Such questions are a symptom of the death of electoral deliberation in the age of blissed-out publicity. Fortunately, they're not a symptom of the death of contingency.

Nothing is sewed up in advance, just patterned---if not petered---out.