Celebrity President? Over My Dumb Body.

Ever since Barack Obama announced his bid for president, I’ve been paying pretty close attention to our candidates and what they mean to me and my country. I, like most, became enamored with Obama’s speeches and message of hope, because, why not? Sounds plausible. Hope didn’t sound that expensive the way he described it, and I didn’t see where a little hope might change my daily routine too drastically. I tried to give John McCain the same amount of attention, and really learn what he’s all about, but I have to admit that I don’t think I’m smart enough or politically savvy enough to understand what it is he plans to do. Even when his confusing and inconsistent views of a world that sounded completely unlike the one I read about and lived in started to make a little sense to me, his impatience and condescension reminded me that I have no business trying to understand a mind like his. I wish I could, but I went to public schools, and I need things explained to me with a little more detail and, well, in grammatically correct English if possible. So, by default and as a result of my own limitations, I became an Obama supporter. I voted for him in the primaries, and planned to vote for him in the general election as well. I really appreciated the efforts John McCain made to inform my decision, and I wanted to believe him when he slipped on his $500 shoes and boarded his wife’s private jet to travel the country and remind me that Barack Obama is an elitist. But again, my sub-par education must be failing me, because it’s obvious that the meaning I had always assigned to “elitist” is completely wrong. Shucks. I wish I was smart enough to understand all of that stuff.

But then McCain did something that shook me out of my silly, overly-positive admiration for my candidate by doing what any great leader of a nation of simple folks would do to save me. He dumbed it down. I hadn’t even realized how close I was to casting a vote for my own destruction until I saw this…



Barack Obama is the BIGGEST CELEBRITY IN THE WORLD?

What the Sam Hill? When in tarnation did this happen? I had seen the crowds, and the constant attention, but I guess I read it differently than I would my favorite gossip mag. I thought he was running for political office, something that I don’t care about because it doesn’t really affect my life at all, but I NEVER thought he would be trying to take the place of my favorite celebrities! And right there, in the first few seconds of the ad, I realized how bad I had let it get. Beautiful photographs of two of the most regal celebrities in the world, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, reminded me of how seriously my priorities had been damaged. What frightens me most now as I remember the first time I watched this illuminating ad, is that in one second, in one split unforgiveable second, with the sounds of Obama’s voice ringing in my ears, I realized that I didn’t know Britney and Paris anymore. I had almost…I shake as I type this…forgotten about them. In the last year I have spent so much time following Obama’s speeches and interviews and frivolous talk about taxes and increasing my family’s income and ending some war or something, that I had completely neglected my fascination with the real heroes of this country, our celebrities.

In a panic, I began to quiz myself.

“Is Paris in rehab now, or out?” I didn’t know.

“Are Britney’s kids old enough yet to ride around on the hood of car the way she likes them to?” I had nothing.

“Are they even her kids anymore or are they with Kevin?”

Oh my God! Where is KFed!

I looked around for a People, or an US, anything to get my bearings and convince myself that I hadn’t completely lost touch with what is truly important, but all I could find was an OK from June. Of 2007! Lindsay Lohan probably has a half a dozen drunken sex tapes that I don’t know about, and I’m sitting here in my living room watching an African-American Jr. Senator from some Midwestern state speak to 200,000 people in Berlin. Wherever that is.

How did he do it? How did he successfully pull off this celebri-coup? I spent the better part of last night googling phrases like, “Obama Rehab Escape”, “Obama Lip Sync Scandal Fat Dancing” and “Upskirt Obama No Underwear” and I found nothing that could explain how he has earned this title. Biggest Celebrity in the World, how dare he even try. So what is Kirstie Allie then?

McCain has been right all along, and I wasn’t smart enough to see it. Obama’s rise to the top of our nation’s most sacred form of worship is the most diabolical form of terrorism. There is no better way to completely destroy our American way of life from within than to distract us from what makes us who we are, and what makes us better than everyone else, by making us turn away from Entertainment Tonight and pay attention to politics.

And to think it almost worked. I feel so dumb.