Electoral Stardust
There’s spring fever and cabin fever. And you’ve must have heard of ‘election fever’. The very word ‘election’ conjures up a plethora of disease sounding words. There’s ‘psephologists’ — persons who undertake “the study and scientific analysis of elections. Psephology uses historical precinct voting data, public opinion polls, campaign finance information and similar statistical data. The term was coined in the United Kingdom in 1952 by historian R. B. McCallum to describe the scientific analysis of past elections.”
So if you’re electorally sick, visit your nearest psephologist. Also there’s the ‘lunatic fringe’, redolent of insanity in contrast to ‘educated voters’ who are presumably engaged in the serene ‘deliberative democracy’ that Andrew Sullivan would understand. There’s the well and the unwell. Where do you fit?
Consider that even liberals can fall under the weather. John Cassidy at the New Yorker in fact has an Rx for residents of the Big Apple who are afflicted with so burning an ‘election fever’ that they just have to do something. They are political junkies — there’s a disease word again — and they need a fix. Cassidy writes:
Now that the debates are over and the candidates have disappeared for good into the swing states, New Yorkers are faced with a pressing problem: How are we to participate in this thing? We want to, we need to—urgently. Ever since the disastrous showdown in Denver on October 3rd, there’s been a certain low-level hysteria in the air, which has affected almost everybody. It’s the mental equivalent of an outburst of poison ivy that demands to be scratched. …
So what can be done to treat it? While the debates were on, they provided a ready remedy … But now there are no more debates … What to do? Voting for Obama is one obvious step, but, really, if you’re not in a swing state, is it even worth it? Sure it is, but you know what I mean …
No, there’s nothing else for it. You’ll just have to take next week off work—tell your boss you’ve got vertigo and have to go and lie down—and transport yourself to Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, or New Hampshire. Those are the seven battleground states, and some of the biggest prizes aren’t very far away. Northern Virginia is just a five-hour drive from the Lincoln Tunnel; Cleveland is eight. Once you arrive, you can go online and look up the nearest “Get Out the Vote” drive: it shouldn’t be hard, they’re everywhere. Ohio might be your best bet. There’s early voting there, and, who knows, you might run into Bruce Springsteen or Bill Clinton, both of whom have been busy lending a hand—or even the President or the Vice-President, who will both be crisscrossing the state constantly from here on out.
Cassidy writes with humorously but makes the serious point that politics is existential. People care about it because it feeds into and defines their self-esteem. Besides engaging in the great issues is one way of escaping from their quotidian lives and into the realm of grand historical drama.
So who wants to keep sitting in front of that computer which the boss has not upgraded in years from Windows 98 — it’s still a CRT — and head for a swing state where “who knows, you might run into Bruce Springsteen or Bill Clinton” if not Barack Obama himself! The Hobbits at least could dream of meeting Smaug the Dragon. We moderns must content ourselves with Hillary.
The need to brush up against fame appears to be a widespread human need. For example the Democratic Underground has a thread called “Touched By Greatness” — which relates the stories of DU-niks who’ve had run-ins with celebrities. That only goes to prove that nothing titillates the vanguard of the proletariat more than aristocracy.
In fact, nothing attracts like the aura of fame. In 1993, playwright John Guare wrote a play, Six Degrees of Separation, which described how a status-obsessed couple were conned by a grifter claiming to be Sidney Poitier’s son.
In a nutshell: Flan (what a name!) and Ouisa Kittredge are art dealers living in posh East Side and are entertaining a guest when this young black man drops by their apartment, victim of muggers. He claims to be not only the son of Sidney Poitier, but also friends with the couple’s children at Harvard. He is so well spoken, exotic, fascinating, flattering, that soon he has everyone in that apartment wrapped around his little finger. When you finally get to meet the children, you quickly understand the reason for that. Paul Poitier is a classy con-artist that makes people fall in love with him. For example, after explaining what his thesis is about (stolen by muggers), Flan Kittredge throws a passionate and outraged “I hope your robbers read every page of it!” It is impossible not to like him. After Paul does the rounds among the Kittredges’ friends, he becomes cocktail party anecdote. Ouisa is the one who eventually admits how much she cares for this boy and becomes incredibly guilty for not having helped him enough. The best metaphor in the movie is represented by the Kandinski painting, the chaos-control canvas, because while on the surface it seems that Oiusa has her life under control with lots of money, powerful friends and poshy luxurious lifestyle, in fact she has another side where there is little sense of meaning.
He was too meaningful a gift horse to look in the mouth. In case the premise seems too absurd remember that Guare’s screenplay was based on the actual life of David Hampton “an American con artist who gained infamy in the 1980s after milking a group of wealthy Manhattanites out of thousands of dollars by convincing them he was Sir Sidney Poitier’s son. His story became the inspiration for a play and later a movie, titled Six Degrees of Separation.”
He also persuaded at least a dozen people into letting him stay with them in their homes or to give him money, including Melanie Griffith; Gary Sinise; Calvin Klein; John Jay Iselin, the president of WNET; Osborn Elliott, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; and a Manhattan urologist. He told some of them that he was a acquaintance of their children, some that he had just missed his plane to Los Angeles and that all his luggage was on it, some that his belongings had been stolen.
Given the choice between meeting Prince Charming and saying good morning to baker next door for the nth time that year, ninety nine percent will go for Prince Charming. The germ of election fever lies in its ability to take us from our daily drudgery and into the world of the headline. And that is why, come to think of it, why many hanker for a cause to lose themselves in: to touch the transcendent and just possibly to meet Bill Clinton.
But it might be well to remember Charles Bronson’s reproof to the two children in Magnificent Seven who were tempted to admire the life of the glamorous gunslinger over that of their peasant father.
You think I’m brave because I carry a gun? Well, your fathers are much braver, because they carry responsibility — for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a-a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee what will ever come of it… this is bravery. That’s why I never started anything like that. That’s why I never will.
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The hobbits also ventured into Mt Doom, while the hosts of the West were distracting the eye of celebrity from their temerity to attempt greatness.
Great M 7 quote ! I stressed that point ad nauseam to my youngsters. There is also an interesting parallel to the current race, with a plodding hard worker about to bury the flash-bang recipient of glitterati veneration. GBUSA
You can stay home and still be a telephone bank volunteer, actually.
Raffaello Follieri – “an American con artist who gained infamy in the 2000’s after milking a group of wealthy Manhattanites out of 10’s of thousands of dollars by convincing them he was wealthy investor.
Instead he ripped off the Vatigan, Clinton Global Initiative, Eva Mendez, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Eric Dane and other Hollywood A-listers all while dating Ann Hathaway.
It is a shame that morons would have us follow them like the Pied Piper.
If you’re going to con, con big. People might suspect you of lying in a small matter, but very few would expect you to lie on a colossal scale. Once you get some people to swallow it, then the rest will follow simply because “it must be true. How can he lie about a thing like that?”
How did Hope-Hawkins put the case for impersonating the King in the “Prisoner of Zenda”?
You might challenge the servant, but who would have the guts to challenge the king? People would be too terrified to try. Once established, he’s established.
Therefore, if you see some grifter hanging off Ann Hathaway’s arm, you can’t say “aren’t you Joe Mittens from the pool hall?” It would be too outrageous too unbelievable to be true. Especially if he has a name like Fabio or the Lord Stanhope Hopkins IV. Hence Rafaello Follieri. If he was called “Ralph” would anyone take him seriously?
Being exotic is part of the whole mystique. You can’t be Barry and be a messianic figure. Who would believe it. The whole problem with the notion of ‘Joseph Smith’ as a prophet is that nobody would credit someone with that name with inspiration.
The turban and gown with the zodiac emblazoned on it is necessary to the soothsayer. So you meet the scoundrel and keep quiet and the thing goes on.
Wretchard – “If you’re going to con, con big. People might suspect you of lying in a small matter, but very few would expect you to lie on a colossal scale.”
I think I am starting to understand the meaning of “The Audacity of Hope. Go big or stay home. Then, having succumbed to the deceit who would want the whole dissembling mess exposed by a new adminstration? The tendancy to deny and play on is overwhelming on this one. Like a giant Mulligan where the Left gets another try to do something not only memorable but useful in a historic way. If they only had another 4 years to fritter away or blame on George Bush, the economy will bounce back and whoever is in office will be credited with that. The characters of the party need a fitting makeover like the fading Mao portraits or Dear Leader, FDR and JFK are losing their appeal to the indoctrinated youth. The path of the shining new way must be of Obama looking bravely into the future. Too much invested in that now and if they let it go as it stands they will lose decades of style message.
So all the faithful need to do is let higher taxes and harsher regulations take hold and the green policies will carry us into a government mandated economic miracle.
There comes a time when the likes of Eric Holder will run out of rug to brush his troubles under. But the corruption goes much deeper than the figure heads who bear the flag. I suspect that Mitt will let them all walk visa vie Gerald Ford out of professional courtesy.
After hinting that Mr. Obama is the “Electoral Stardust” you speak of, you drop the line “The whole problem with the notion of ‘Joseph Smith’ as a prophet is that nobody would credit someone with that name with inspiration.”
Um, Mr. Fernandez, disrespecting Joseph Smith, are you hinting at a last-minute change in your professed allegiance in this election, or was this a Freudian slip?
Where as names like Jabba the Hutt or Ivan the Terrible may invoke terror and consternation in the hearts of the average man, Bob Johnson the Grocer would probably not. Romney should have changed his name to Mittholomew Von Romperoy, III to wow those who are taken over by celebrity. Certainly Barrack vs Barry will bear that out.
A Hussein by any other name should smell my feet.
@7
I saw no disrespect.
I was hardly disrespecting Joseph Smith, simply observing that mystery and strangeness are elements which appeal to crowds. This is not an original idea. “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.” Matthew 13:57. Or as the secular equivalent puts it: “no man is a hero to his own valet.”
Hence we would rather believe in Xenu, Gaia or the Solar Temple than the familiar faiths. And while there may be people who sincerely wish to be Buddhists or Muslims or members of the Knights Templar, there were always a certain percentage who were attracted principally by the chance to don a costume and become special.
The stardust effect is universal and not without validity. But one of the lost themes of the War of Independence was the mistrust of rule by special men. I think it was Benjamin Franklin who first realized that ideally Congress should not consist of the “great and the good” but of people who were representatives of the public. Gordon Wood added that what was extraordinary about the founders was that they enabled “ordinary men to rule”.
The celebrity — even of Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan — is probably unavoidable, but it is nothing like the cult of personality that surrounds the President. But there may be something unhealthy about the impulse to lay our fates at the feet of special people. It attracts the sort of people who want kings and see themselves as aristocrats on their own account.
Recently a lady impersonated a University of Kentucky student on the Internet holding up a sign like “I don’t like Kenians” implying that the Romney crowd, the flyover crowd, essentially consisted of illiterates. The message was that we were always better off being ruled by the Ivy Leaguers rather than the “halp me” set. This sounded an awful lot like the old British saying that “public school men rule the best”. By public school was meant Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Rugby etc. And by and large people believed it up until World War 1 discredited the whole notion.
Government is always likely to be a corrupt and mediocre affair at best. The insight of the founders was to realize this was the probably the best anyone could do; that a government that was relatively small, middling and occasionally helpful was likely to be as much as anyone could hope for.
In the movie “Victor/Victoria”, Robert Preston passes Julie Andrews off as a female impersonator who can sing wonderfully like a woman (this is back in “Gay” Paris of the 1920s). Lots of fun in the movie, but when Julie told Robert that there was no way she could pull it off, i.e., pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman, he said he would pass her off as a Polish count, driven from the homeland because ‘he’ was gay–and that this surface con would deflect everyone’s attention from the deeper con.
Exactly what Wretchard is talking about here, t’would seem.
And of course the Hobbits were great precisely because they weren’t blinded by celebrity. The Gaffer told his son Sam that he, the Gaffer, “didn’t hold with wearing ironmongery”, and very few of the other Hobbits were impressed by “big shots”, either (except Ted Sandyman, and look how he turned out).
An Préachán
Is it me, or is John Cassidy’s plea to “transport yourself to Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, or New Hampshire” more than a little bit of a dog whistle telling New Yorkers to “go vote in those states if you can get away with it?” Florida, Virginia and New Hampshire are pretty common second home destinations for New Yorkers, after all. Florida in particular.
In general, Mr. Cassidy — in fact, all the New Yorker bloggers — is one of the most dim-witted political commentators out there. He’s a witless gasbag who spouts endless banalities and falsehoods. In short, a big dummy. I used to smack him around a lot in his comments section, but that didn’t last long as I was quickly banned (you know how Liberals love “diversity” of thought!). I then changed IDs and was banned again. After that, I just quit trying.
But what about the bursting bubble that underlies all of this sturm und drang?
This is the last hurrah of liberalism, and the liberals sense it. For that matter, they are beginning to smell the pot of horse manure at the end of the boomer rainbow, the final outcome of the dream of sex, drugs, and rock and roll for all and for all time that was hatched in those whacky ’60s.
Soon, even Butch Cassidy and his buds will know that they are yesterday’s news, that the list of liberal icons that they may or may not have rubbed shoulders with are just a bunch of washed-up Babba Wawas.
Real people who believe in real and eternal things are less subject to the rise and fall of politics and fashion and, from the looks of it, less likely to be snookered by some smart-ass dark-skinned man ready to prey upon their white liberal guilt.
If Mr Cassidy’s itchy political junkies go to Virginia and Ohio to Jones in front of the locals it just might seal the deal for Romney.
wretchard @ 10
There’s a great [NSFW] scene from an irreverent and silly old Jamaican movie gem that my family still whispers a line from when we want to slyly bring attention to a shiny fish in a small pond who’s fawning over some [supposedly] high person or celebrity.
“…Our queen does not defecate.”
Needless to say, we’ve found cause to use it alot in these last few years under the wizkidz.
Anyway, the whole film is chock full of scenes which illustrate that there are some outmoded reverences, conventions, and traditions that are simply better than their modern replacements, even if they appear as madness to sophist-icated minds. And despite the fact that there is the seed of both good and evil resident in every man’s mind, the old Jamaican equivalent of bitter-clinging fly-over country folk of all stations often make innately better neighbors in their imperfection than those who style themselves to be their intellectual superiors.
Woooa!! As if waiting for Liza in HD isn’t enough, now you say Julie Andrews has something to teach us? Something perhaps even blog-worthy?
“If you’re going to con, con big.”
Like the two WWII Polish POWS who escaped by stealing the camp commandant’s Mercedes staff car. One was a Mercedes trained mechanic and so was assigned the task of maintaining the car. And via such access and with no little audacity one day he and another Polish POW put on fabricated German uniforms, got in the car, and drove to Switzerland. If they had tried hitchiking their way there, pretending to be potato pickers, it would have never have worked. But a colonel in a Mercedes staff car with his driver, well, that had to be on the up and up.
A propos Wretchard’s comment #10, I was amused to read that the person closest to St Louis King of France, who refused to testify to the King’s sanctity, was his wife the Queen. She evidently felt that instead of going on Crusade he should have remained in France and governed wisely. His death on crusade left France weaker financially and militarily.
Long ago, I read a line which stuck with me. I think it might have been Heinlein. “If Columbus had gone into the Queen’s court asking for a dime, he’d've been tossed out on his ear. As it was, he got the crown jewels.”
In my days as a racing journalist, I soon discovered that one can get in anywhere if one carries a clip board and looks preoccupied. In fact, once you are inside, everyone assumes that somebody else examined your credentials and nobody gives you a second look. I once walked into the paddock at Le Mans without any credentials, because I was walking with a driver friend and we were chatting about his team. Mark Twain cited the man who started a rumour that they’d struck oil in Hell, and then joined the ensuing stampede “because if so many people believed it, it must be so.”
Thanks, Judith! Will take a look…..- SerenaK
Be interested in the relevance of the relief of AFRICOM Commander GEN Carter Ham and Strike Group 3 Commander, RADM Gaouette to the Benghazi mess.
Any thoughts?
Studying elections is fascinating