Obama: Star of his own movie

By GottaLaff

I hadn't seen anything like this, so I thought I'd pass it on:

His 'celebrity' comes from an emotional identity with voters, not from 'rock star' hysteria.

But for Obama and for Bobby [Kennedy], the characterization is insulting and imprecise. It is insulting because it suggests that their devotees' effusions are just a visceral reaction -- the political equivalent of puppy love. And it is imprecise because Obama is -- and Bobby was -- more movie star than rock star, which is an analogy with a difference. Rock stars, with some glaring exceptions, typically whip up the crowd; the thrill tends to be short-lived. Movie stars, by contrast, tend to create a long-standing emotional identification with their audience.

I don't like either analogy, but I understand Neal Gabler's point.

All campaigns are movies now, consisting of competing narratives with competing stars. Part of Obama's appeal, as it was for the Kennedys, is that he has what all rising stars have. He has youth. He has good looks. He has charisma. He has an ability to spellbind. He has had a rapid ascent that makes him new and unfamiliar.

He has brains. He has reasoning. He has a sound, rational mind. He as poise. And if anyone would pay attention, he wouldn't be all that unfamiliar.

But, above all, Obama has something else that all great stars have -- he embodies a theme. Every great star is a walking idea.

I bet we can come up with a few J Sid themes, couldn't we?

They [mega movie stars] incorporated ideas that mattered to us, that resonated with us.

Obama is a star in this sense too. As he reiterates endlessly, Obama brings idealism at a time when many Americans are despairing of making any headway against the problems the nation faces. Drawing on his own personal story of disadvantage that led to Columbia University, Harvard Law School and now to the Democratic nomination, Obama in his every gesture and utterance suggests that "Yes We Can." This idealism isn't inspiring adulation because Obama is already a star. Obama is a star precisely because he is inspiring. He is the anti-Bush, and what he's selling is hope.

There. That was the part with which I agreed. America needs him. We're certainly not lacking for celebrities, so it doesn't follow that we'd need to create one more. Obama's "stardom" grew from the country's hunger for what can be, and the need to sever what has been...

...and if there ever was a has-been, it's Bush.

Critics, not least of all John McCain, have complained that this is merely windy rhetoric [...] Eventually, they say, Obama will come back to Earth the way rock stars do when the concert ends. But this misses the point of what Obama has tapped into... Yes, politicians can declaim themes, and Obama is doing that. Yet Obama is not just declaiming his theme the way most politicians have. He has lived it, which is why it has been so effective.

Not all "experience" is created equal. Obama's differs from J Sid's.

There were many voters, he realized then, who would opt for the "psychic security of [Richard] Nixon," the staid, reliable politics of trepidation rather than "be brave enough to enlist the romantic dream" of America that Kennedy promised. You never quite know where a movie star might take you.

Obama faces that obstacle too. It is the downside of being a star. What this election may finally come down to is a choice between politics and movie stardom, between the safety of what we think we know and the expansiveness of what we dream, or, in more prosaic terms, between good old John Wayne and the less predictable but more exciting Will Smith. In any case, rock stars need not apply.

Interesting take, but I don't go along with all of it. What do you think?