Play the Game

To the extent it cropped up on my radar, I found the notion of Bush appearing on a "game" show to be more than a little odd, and Dennis Perrin summed it up nicely:

For all the talk about "elitism" in American politics, and the need for candidates to "connect" with the common herd, this single image shows that even a head of state with incredibly low poll numbers is treated as king. Professional journos and commentators stress that acquiescence before [Fredo] is a simple show of respect for the office. But that's what they're paid to do, to keep the discourse about and public behavior towards our rulers in check and well within acceptable lines. If Bush is as despised as liberals insist he is, then why is everyone so polite in that photo? Decorum? Respect? Fear? Apathy? Call me romantic, but in a free society governed by such a murderous, corrupt cabal as this fading administration, the audience should be allowed to pelt that screen with rocks and garbage, while Howie Mandel reverts to his old act, screeching and wailing his approval.

I would go one further even. Bush's appearance was to cheer on a contestant who also happened to be a veteran of Bush's big Mesopotamian adventure, on a network whose parent company is a defense contractor which owns its own news division, which is happily in the tank for Poor Ol' Straight Talk. Media cartographers are welcome to draw their own map, if need be.

The usual conspiracies of collusion are inoperative -- and unnecessary -- in these situations, because they're all the same people, talking to each other, doing each other favors, gathering to pretend that everything is hunky-dory, with a gibbering lemur emceeing the hijinks in this instance. There's no need to work anything out behind the scenes, since there's never any problem with doing it right in the open. I mean really, what are you gonna do about it, vote for Obama? Good luck with that.

The poor contestant, by the way, departed with a mere $26,000 rather than the million pimped by the show's incessant commercials. Couldn't someone have just pointed him to the million-dollar suitcase, or are we worried about the integrity of the process here? Perhaps the upcoming Star Wars-themed episode will help determine this. George Lucas is going to hell, not just for this one, though it certainly doesn't help his case.

Speaking of going to hell, an appropriate counterpart to the stupid Deal thing was the appearance of all three candidates recently on the WWE. Of the clips I saw, the one most unclear on the concept was (surprise) Obama. While he got off a nice pun on The Rock's old catchphrase, he also prefaced it with a smattering of policy wonkism. These are people who pay their hard-earned (but apparently not quite hard-earned enough) money to watch steroided goons beat each other with folding chairs and choreographed pseudo-karate moves. The notion that they give two shits about universal health care is charming in its sheer naivete.

Of course, any candidate with the good sense to just pass up all this nonsense would instantly be derided by the millionaire media as "elitist" and "out of touch", which only bolsters the eternal question of what sort of person would willingly put themselves through this gauntlet of stupid. And yet, perhaps pro wrestling is the ideal metaphor for what passes for a political process in this country.