I remember reading somewhere, in a tribute to Tim Russert, an account given by Tom Brokaw in which he remembered Russert calling him in the middle of the night and asking incredulously: Do you believe they're paying us for this year?
"This year" referring, most likely, to 'the year a lot more people decided caring about the election was the cool thing to do -- and hey, also really good comedy.'
If only Russert could have seen what that pre-primaries political excitement has turned into.
The stream of jokes that this year's election has generated is unprecedented, though not exactly uncalled for. I won't deny that the soap-opera drama, unusual campaign tactics and ridiculous slip-ups by various candidates have made for some hilarious political comedy, yet I can't help but think that it has only propelled us into dangerous territory: turning the election into a fad.
It would be impossible to pinpoint where all the hype and the humor began. Maybe it was when Obama first appeared on the scene, presenting something the American Youth could identify with -- a candidate with no gray hair and a penchant for energetic change. Maybe it was when Hillary planned her wardrobe for the campaign trail to include a pantsuit in every hue of the rainbow. Or maybe it was when PalinPalooza began not too long ago, though it seems like her nasally voice (which sounds terrifyingly like that of the mother in the cartoon "Bobby's World") has been haunting my dreams for years.
I remember being horrified when I first saw Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover of Us Weekly months ago. But since then, a candidate whose name and family drama aren't plastered on glossy magazine covers might as well be the last kid picked for kickball. We're so bombarded by petty details of the candidates' personal lives (some I'd rather not know) that it's impossible for anyone to focus on the important issues without being distracted by the irrelevant ones. Blame it on the candidates themselves, or blame it on the media capitalizing on our country's thirst for gossip, but any way you slice it this election, arguably the most important in decades, has been warped into something embarrassing.
In July, The New York Times published a column by Maureen Dowd entitled, "May We Mock, Barack?" pointing out that Obama could be potentially losing favor because there was nothing explicitly "funny" about him. I felt this was less a problem for political comedians and more of a commentary on our society -- have we become so disengaged from our fate that now we're bored? Do we need to be laughing to start caring about our country?
The more somber possibility is that in the past four years we've seen our country change and fail in ways we didn't anticipate. We're losing our international respect, we're engaged in a confusing war in Iraq, and our economy is dangerously unstable. After all the disappointments, maybe the only thing left to do is laugh.
If America is like a sinking ship, the likes of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert would be like the trio of musicians that kept on playing on the deck of the Titanic until it was completely submerged. Given recent history, Americans are scared, and understandably so. If they weren't, people wouldn't be clinging so steadfastly to any detail they can scrounge up on their candidate of choice.
More than ever before, a person's pick for presidency is presumed as being a direct insight into his or her personality. In this election, the projected image is everything, and the platforms, ideas and track records all take a back seat. Take the vice presidential debate, for example. Even though Sarah Palin has repeatedly proved herself unknowledgeable and incompetent, she was rated strongly in the polls following the debate because she looked straight at the camera, winked a few times, and used the same "soothing buzzword" tactic that George Bush has been using to distract the American people for the past eight years.
This "image consciousness" that has been dominating the coverage of the election recently is exactly what has pushed us into focusing on the wrong things: turning candidate choices into brand name statements about ourselves, while laughing at the whole thing because each candidate has become a caricature of him or herself.
But this country is slipping backward at an alarming rate, and if the person elected this November turns out to be the wrong choice, something tells me there won't be anything left to laugh at.
