'Celebrity' Politics

[Tommy-K]

I wanted to start a discussion on what I like to call, 'celebrity politics'. I live in the UK and have just had to watch in horror as bumbling idiot Boris Johnson is elected mayor of London. Do you know he has minders, in case he goes referring to black people as 'pickerninnies' again? And beneath his bumbling, blonde, cretin exterior, actually lies some pretty dangerous Thatcherist politics.

Anyway, the point of my thread is as follows. The only reason this twat was elected is that he's that funny blonde bloke off the telly, what a legurnd! I'm having slight deja vu here. Ronald Reagan? Arnold Schwarzenegger? They were all elected for their celebrity status, not for their politics, I mean, look at how incapable they all are anyway! I suppose to a certain extent, the same applies to Charlton Heston when he became head of the NRA. And while we're on the subject of dear Mr Heston, I'm glad he's finally copped it. I hope it was very slow and excruciatingly painful, and if there is a hell, I hope he's burning in it right now whilst having rifles inserted into every orifice available.

Where do you think this culture of 'celebrity politics' is going? Will it get worse? I personally believe this is a screaming wake-up call hilighting the braindead nature of the consumerist society we all live in. The media has officially taken over.

[Guerrilla22]

I would attribute it largely to the dumbening down of politics in general. Instead of making politics a debate about policy, we've seen bourgeios politicians make political contest essentielly contest of who has the best sound bites. Its a strategy to keep left parties and dissent down, as if citizens actually examined the policies of bourgeios governments they would see a system that does nothing but enable the ruling class. So essentielly their goal is to keep voters as ignorant as possible.

The media has played a huge role in helping bourgeios states by reducing news to 30 second clips and conviently ignoring real issues, discussing trival matters, such as Hillary Clinton's bust line, is Obama's church, wearing flag lapel pins, ect. When this happens politics become popularity contest, and seeing as how western society is fixated on celebrities, it makes sense that celebs are able to make gains in the political arena.