Oprah trumps Britney on the campaign trail
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
Margaret Carlson
If Mary Ann told you to go jump in the lake, would you do it? That's the question my mother often asked when I cited a child more popular than I was to garner her support for a dubious activity.
It didn't work back then. Mom never let me wear T-shirts of questionable taste under my school uniform. Yet political candidates place a lot of stock in endorsements from those more popular than themselves.
It's a tricky business. Everyone knows to avoid Britney Spears, but even ``good'' celebrities are a package deal: You get the positive (Barbra Streisand has a beautiful voice), and the negative (she expects to be consulted on global warming).
The other problem is that candidates attract celebrities most like themselves, appealing to voters already prone to support them. What most of them need is to draw famous supporters with qualities they don't possess. Like Senator Hillary Clinton bringing in Tina Fey or Carol Burnett.
Doesn't Bill Richardson, with his bolo tie and devil-may- care hostage rescues, already speak to the daredevil within? So, do the Unser brothers of Nascar fame really conjure gravitas for him?
Mike Huckabee did little to expand his base when he announced his first big celebrity endorsement, the long-on- fighting, short-on-thinking martial arts star Chuck Norris.
Last week, Huckabee a former governor of smallish Arkansas, couldn't answer simple questions about the new National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, he's appearing in an ad deadpanning: ``My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris.'' Yes, and why not Smokey and the Bandit for Homeland Security.
Aside from the fact that we've had seven years of Chuck Norris foreign policy with little to show for it, what Huckabee needs to prove as he moves into the top tier of contenders in Iowa is that he has policy credentials, foreign and otherwise.
Maybe he could try for Hal Holbrook, an actor who could plausibly play John Foster Dulles, instead of someone who's a cross between an actor and an action figure. For his second endorsement, Huckabee has put the hammerlock on wrestler Ric ``Nature Boy'' Flair.
On the other hand, Senator Barack Obama could use a little cross-typing with Nature Boy on his side to supplement Oprah Winfrey. Obama already has a running start with the Oprah crowd, the spiritually in-touch voters who believe in the politics of hope and carry NPR tote bags.
What Obama needs is someone who gives him grit. Karl Rove wrote that Obama has to look Clinton in the eye at a debate and challenge her on her claims to have been co-president.
After Clinton ridiculed Obama's comment about gaining his foreign policy experience living abroad as a youth by pointing to the dozens of world leaders she knows personally, Obama retorted, ``I wonder which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq.''
Say that at a debate, and Obama's image would change overnight. Unfortunately, there will be none of that when Oprah's along in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. Remember it took Oprah, with her can't-we-all-get-along philosophy, months to confront author James Frey about his outright and repeated lies to her, although she'd made his book a runaway bestseller.
On balance, of course, the first-ever political endorsement by the goddess of daytime TV is one any candidate would covet, cutting as it does across religious, political and demographic lines. Even George W. Bush, who hates to ``go on the couch,'' genuflected at the altar of Oprah in 2000, planting a kiss on her upturned cheek, speaking of God and his battle with alcohol, eyes brimming with talk-show tears.
The Clinton campaign countered Obama's diva with one of its own, Streisand, a curious choice given that she won her fame in the '60s, the era Obama wants to turn the page on.
Streisand's endorsement also evokes memories of the less- appealing aspects of Bill Clinton's presidency: Of the 404 sleepovers during Clinton I, Streisand seemed to have 400 of them, having such a run of the place that she made a point of calling friends from the president's study next to the Oval Office, made famous by Monica Lewinsky.
Streisand was Clinton's ATM machine, raising millions with a concert, and she expected to be taken seriously in return. Problem is she was. Republicans are smarter about celebrities. They know to take their money and NOT call in the morning.
If you don't believe celebrities are a mixed blessing, remember Whoopi Goldberg's X-rated rant at a 2004 fund-raising gala for Senator John Kerry.
Kerry reinforced the suspicion he was out of touch with middle America and was inured to sexual tastelessness when he rose to thank Goldberg at the end, despite sitting through a stream of sexual puns based on Bush's name. Goldberg, Kerry declared, conveyed ``the heart and soul of our country.''
Kerry didn't lose because of Whoopi, and Norris won't harm Huckabee's rise in Iowa if the candidate can make the case that he's serious in other ways. Oprah can help at the margins to get women who aren't following the race closely to take a look at Obama.
Yet for her part, I doubt Streisand could even bring back to the fold one-time Clinton partisan David Geffen, who told the New York Times he's sick of Bill and Hillary.
The best measure of a celebrity endorsement is how much money it -- quietly -- raises. In the end, that's how much good it will do.
....................
Bloomberg
If Mary Ann told you to go jump in the lake, would you do it? That's the question my mother often asked when I cited a child more popular than I was to garner her support for a dubious activity.
It didn't work back then. Mom never let me wear T-shirts of questionable taste under my school uniform. Yet political candidates place a lot of stock in endorsements from those more popular than themselves.
It's a tricky business. Everyone knows to avoid Britney Spears, but even ``good'' celebrities are a package deal: You get the positive (Barbra Streisand has a beautiful voice), and the negative (she expects to be consulted on global warming).
The other problem is that candidates attract celebrities most like themselves, appealing to voters already prone to support them. What most of them need is to draw famous supporters with qualities they don't possess. Like Senator Hillary Clinton bringing in Tina Fey or Carol Burnett.
Doesn't Bill Richardson, with his bolo tie and devil-may- care hostage rescues, already speak to the daredevil within? So, do the Unser brothers of Nascar fame really conjure gravitas for him?
Mike Huckabee did little to expand his base when he announced his first big celebrity endorsement, the long-on- fighting, short-on-thinking martial arts star Chuck Norris.
Last week, Huckabee a former governor of smallish Arkansas, couldn't answer simple questions about the new National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran has no nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, he's appearing in an ad deadpanning: ``My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris.'' Yes, and why not Smokey and the Bandit for Homeland Security.
Aside from the fact that we've had seven years of Chuck Norris foreign policy with little to show for it, what Huckabee needs to prove as he moves into the top tier of contenders in Iowa is that he has policy credentials, foreign and otherwise.
Maybe he could try for Hal Holbrook, an actor who could plausibly play John Foster Dulles, instead of someone who's a cross between an actor and an action figure. For his second endorsement, Huckabee has put the hammerlock on wrestler Ric ``Nature Boy'' Flair.
On the other hand, Senator Barack Obama could use a little cross-typing with Nature Boy on his side to supplement Oprah Winfrey. Obama already has a running start with the Oprah crowd, the spiritually in-touch voters who believe in the politics of hope and carry NPR tote bags.
What Obama needs is someone who gives him grit. Karl Rove wrote that Obama has to look Clinton in the eye at a debate and challenge her on her claims to have been co-president.
After Clinton ridiculed Obama's comment about gaining his foreign policy experience living abroad as a youth by pointing to the dozens of world leaders she knows personally, Obama retorted, ``I wonder which world leader told her that we needed to invade Iraq.''
Say that at a debate, and Obama's image would change overnight. Unfortunately, there will be none of that when Oprah's along in New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina. Remember it took Oprah, with her can't-we-all-get-along philosophy, months to confront author James Frey about his outright and repeated lies to her, although she'd made his book a runaway bestseller.
On balance, of course, the first-ever political endorsement by the goddess of daytime TV is one any candidate would covet, cutting as it does across religious, political and demographic lines. Even George W. Bush, who hates to ``go on the couch,'' genuflected at the altar of Oprah in 2000, planting a kiss on her upturned cheek, speaking of God and his battle with alcohol, eyes brimming with talk-show tears.
The Clinton campaign countered Obama's diva with one of its own, Streisand, a curious choice given that she won her fame in the '60s, the era Obama wants to turn the page on.
Streisand's endorsement also evokes memories of the less- appealing aspects of Bill Clinton's presidency: Of the 404 sleepovers during Clinton I, Streisand seemed to have 400 of them, having such a run of the place that she made a point of calling friends from the president's study next to the Oval Office, made famous by Monica Lewinsky.
Streisand was Clinton's ATM machine, raising millions with a concert, and she expected to be taken seriously in return. Problem is she was. Republicans are smarter about celebrities. They know to take their money and NOT call in the morning.
If you don't believe celebrities are a mixed blessing, remember Whoopi Goldberg's X-rated rant at a 2004 fund-raising gala for Senator John Kerry.
Kerry reinforced the suspicion he was out of touch with middle America and was inured to sexual tastelessness when he rose to thank Goldberg at the end, despite sitting through a stream of sexual puns based on Bush's name. Goldberg, Kerry declared, conveyed ``the heart and soul of our country.''
Kerry didn't lose because of Whoopi, and Norris won't harm Huckabee's rise in Iowa if the candidate can make the case that he's serious in other ways. Oprah can help at the margins to get women who aren't following the race closely to take a look at Obama.
Yet for her part, I doubt Streisand could even bring back to the fold one-time Clinton partisan David Geffen, who told the New York Times he's sick of Bill and Hillary.
The best measure of a celebrity endorsement is how much money it -- quietly -- raises. In the end, that's how much good it will do.
....................
Bloomberg