Michelle Obama wears nothing quite well…

Just thought I’d chime into the hype to make the modest suggestion that Presidential candidates and their wives (or husbands in the future perhaps) just flat out wear nothing to these great innaugural parties. The emperor needs new clothes. Perhaps I’m the dirty little brat that sees all this fashion fixation as a superficial attempt to make power seem pretty and watching the trends makes me convinced that skin will one day be really in. “Oh, it looks smashing!” “Fabulous, darling. Simply fabulous.” “Ey, ‘ee ain’t go’ no’ing on!” McLuhan was quite right. It’s the antisocial brat who has not been well-adjusted to the arbitrary trends of interest and actually sees the new environment. The medium is quite the massage. Fashion in new media is now such an easy stunt. Now we can instantly track trends, discuss and discover receptions, compare fashion statements across the global village and follow the currents off a cliff… Yaaaaaaaaaay.

Before you write off Obama as a prime example of the “cult of personality” in America, realize that American pop-culture is heavily rooted in the cult of personality, that marketing in the contemporary sense is an appeal to American pop-culture and that presidential campaigns are in reality merely marketing campaigns for career-oriented politicians. The oval office is not an executive branch of government that seeks to defend the constitution and safeguard the interests of the people from the interests of legislators, it is an icon of the constantly-evolving, ever-manipulated market that was once called the public. Res publica is really a plutocratic logocracy. Remember the Maine! Manifest Destiny! War on Terror! Hope.

I love how it conveniently culminates in Hope. We tore this world to ruin and now the best advice we get is “hang in there, don’t lose confidence.”  Each year, our language is reduced to Euphamisms as a result of the desire to soften public anger. When words lose their meaning, when the power of words is taken out of the hands of the people, democracy weakens.

McLuhan shines his prophetic light: “At the speed of light, policies and political parties yield place to charismatic images.” While I feel Obama proves to be a good leader, I can’t help but wonder if the media objectively captures the real Obama. News sources seem to flood the reports with personality and government receptions and not how he is preparing, what actions he has taken or any of his method patterns. Or perhaps we’re again applying the methods of the old to the environments of the new? In any case, at least the hasty, ideological and incompetent administration of the past has left.