Quote of the Day: Christine O’Donnell Not a Witch but a “Fad”
Sep 3rd, 2011 | 5 responses
Our political Quote of the Day comes from Meghan McCain on why failed Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware Christine O’Donnell has now become one of the country’s most prominent failed authors:
News has been filtering out all week about the mess of a book tour Christine O’Donnell has been on. Her book Troublemaker: Let’s Do What It Takes to Make America Great Again reportedly has sold only 2,200 copies and only five people showed up at a book signing she held in Naples, Fla., with one person coming only to ask her to sign a book on demonology. While promoting her book, she generated a flurry of publicity by walking off Piers Morgan’s show on CNN, because she said she was being “sexually harassed” by Morgan when he started asking her about gay marriage.
I don’t find any pleasure in Christine O’Donnell’s book and book tour spectacularly bombing. What I am taking from O’Donnell is one big fat warning sign that all Republicans should be aware of moving forward.
O’Donnell is the result of an epidemic within politics today. She’s a politician that can gather international media attention by using cheap tricks and publicity stunts with little to no substance or experience to back it up. This is a woman who at one point was getting so much attention, that Saturday Night Live cold opened an episode with a parody of one of her campaign ads.
The idea of the celebrity politician is nothing new, and depending on one’s perspective, either President Obama or Sarah Palin are the country’s first celebrity politicians. But O’Donnell is our first “fad” politician, meaning she is a politician whose moment is fleeting but intense and memorable for all of the wrong reasons.O’Donnell isn’t to be completely blamed for what happened to her. She was promoted and lauded for her association with Tea Party values yet not vetted in the way someone seriously considering running for Senate should be. The result is a not-ready-for-primetime candidate who proceeds to make rookie mistakes, all the while embarrassing their party and themselves and proving to everyone what most knew all along—they are unelectable. Style and media attention have come to outweigh issues and substance. The media feeds into it, and these politicians who aren’t prepared and seasoned enough make fools of themselves.
Read the rest of it. She notes that even the Tea Party is now distancing themselves from O’Donnell. She has become akin to some of those celebrities during the late 50s and 60s who were celebrated for being celebrated but really had little to their names in terms of even hack-work acting, singing or dancing.
They appeared on all of the era’s talk shows (Jack Parr, Johnny Carson and a few were seemingly literally shoved down Dick Cavett’s throat when he was on ABC and initially tried to avoid some of the same old tired celebrity-because-I-am-celebrity faces). They had or made lots of money but were D list (except for on those shows).
O’Donnell seemed a real option for Delaware voters a while.
And then — with the twitch of the voters’, book-buyers’ and Tea Partiers noses — she was almost visibly gone.
She’s still here.
But a real option?
Not for much at this point but a reality show. (Hey: here’s an idea. Why not do one titled “Christine O’Donnell’s Alaska”?)
5 Responses to “Quote of the Day: Christine O’Donnell Not a Witch but a “Fad””
Wait…
Is O’Donnell really Snooky?
Come on, Snooky gets a shot don’t she?
“The result is a not-ready-for-primetime candidate who proceeds to make rookie mistakes, all the while embarrassing their party and themselves”
I wasn’t aware that republicans were capable of embarrassment.
Another day, another post about an irrelevant Republican who has zero influence on governance or policy.
I suspect that Joe feels comfortable making post after post after irrelevant Republicans because he thinks that such posts will turn more people into automatic Democratic voters.
All such posts really do is demonstrate how people who used to work in the media are very partisan and refuse to face reality. Instead of any post for the next month, why not post articles about how the Democrats actually handle policy and governance.
I guess writing about witches is more fun an easier than writing posts about how the Democrats are unable to reconcile their own policy positions or how the leadership of the Democratic party live their personal lives versus what they say in their policy statements.
SD, it is indeed relevant and I wish it wasn’t. O’Donnell is a metaphor for too much of the GOP these days. Of course they don’t care to admit this truth.
The only people who care about O’Donnell are progressive who hate elections and who find middle class whites to difficult to lead.
Since O’Donnell does not hold office, has zero effect on policy, governance, or politics, she is by defintion of irrelevant.
She is much less a metaphor for what is wrong with the GOP than the CBC and CHC is a metaphor for the spending, regulation, and racism of the Democratic Party.
Every member of the CBC is much more relevant than O’Donnell but I know that a “good progressive” like Joe will never, ever write a post the members of the CBC.