On celebrity

Sarah Palin is back in the news thanks to the impending release of her book and a recent appearance on Oprah Winfrey's show.

The main effect of all this seems to have been for journalists to write about the renewed possibility of Palin running for - and maybe winning - the American presidency in 2012. (My favourite line, and I've seen it in too many places to attribute it to just one person, is that this is what the Mayans were expecting.)

President Palin, the conventional logic goes, would be a disaster. A combination of celebrity and neo-con, she would be able to enacted a Bush-like agenda with far more support because of her Clinton-like folksy charm.

In reality, I'm not so convinced that a Sarah Palin presidency would spell the end of Western civilization, or even the more realistic option of an increasingly laughable America.

American presidents do not really have all that much power - look at how far Obama has had to stray to the right to accomplish even a tiny fraction of what he'd like to. Why would Sarah Palin be any different? Wouldn't Congress still be able to impose its will on her orders?

More importantly, Sarah Palin is not a hard ideologue like Bush Sr. or Obama or even Jimmy Carter - she is perhaps the most malleable politician we've ever seen. If anybody can convince her that something is a good idea - and it seems pretty easy to do just that, Palin must be either incapable of or unwilling to engage in any sort of critical thought - she will back that idea until her dying breath.

I don't think she realizes how stupid some of the things she says will seem. I think she honestly believes that she is doing what's best for America. In that sense, at least, she has the right motivation.

The problems arise if she chooses to surround herself with people who might be less scrupulous, less willing to suggest policies which are good for the country, and more willing to suggest policies that are good for the people suggesting them - which, given that this is the GOP we're talking about, seems like a foregone conclusion.

It's okay to want to be president for the ego boost - didn't Obama spend the first month of his reign inviting different musicians and celebrities to the White House? What's worrying is when you're so caught up in the celebrity of the presidency that the business of governing the country comes second (or third, or fourth, or...). Especially if the people you delegate it to aren't the right people for such a task. That's why I'm terrified of Sarah Palin.

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Speaking of celebrity (how's that for a forced segue?), it was one of the thousand or so topics that came up in class today. Basically, the argument was that the primary purpose of blogs is not to provide journalism - bloggers don't actually care about reporting the news on their blogs, they're just hoping to get noticed and become (on some level) celebrities.

At first, I disagreed with this idea. Specifically, I thought of this blog - I've never considered it a celebrity-making endeavour. It's a place for me to hone my writing and analytical skills. If people happen to enjoy reading my random brain droppings, great - that's why it's open to the public. But it's not like I go out of my way to court an audience.

Well, that last bit isn't exactly true. Or true at all, really. Case in point: tomorrow's issue of The Sputnik has a little plug for this blog.

I could take the easy way out and claim that it doesn't really count as seeking publicity when it wasn't my idea. But when it was suggested to me, I still said yes. And beyond that, I've put stuff up on Twitter in the past if I've been particularly proud of it.

There is literally nothing that would attract people to this place over any of the million other blogs out there, aside from a personal connection with me. Bad nursery rhymes, links to websites people already know about, and mildly amusing personal anecdotes aren't exactly high-quality material.

And yet, I publish our URL in the school paper, in the hopes that it'll attract another reader to my bizarre and often incomprehensible writings. (Which would give us a grand total of, what, maybe three?)

So I guess somewhere, deep down, I do want to be a celebrity, no matter how much I may deny it on the surface.

Just don't put me anywhere near TMZ.

--Ryan

(P.S. To our new third reader, I'm not always this introspective. Nor this cynical. Honest.)