Accountability

If you're running for President of the United States, it's likely you've spent a bit of time in the public eye. It's likely that you know that you'll be under heavy media scrutiny, that your every move will be analyzed ad nauseum until well after the campaign ends.

So please act like it.

Read the eight inch letters on the giant sign before you stand by it with a big cheese-eating grin on your face. Think about how the cost of your haircut is going to be perceived by people listening to your next populist stump speech. Think about the words you choose before you speak into the microphone. Consider how your hair-brained ideas sound to people on the other side and think for a second how you might use actual facts and not just a bunch of hyperbole to support your position.

It's not like this is the first media circus campaign. It's not like people haven't been talking for decades about how television changed the face of the presidency (literally) with the Kennedy/Nixon battle in the 60s.

You want privacy? Run for city council or sheriff or something. Or go back to private industry. People don't write news stories about middle managers (unless they bring a gun to work or embezzle.)

Don't tell me to lighten up. Use your heads, you nitwits. We don't need another moron in the White House.

It's the old Eddie Vedder Conundrum of Celebrity...People like to see pictures of famous people. They like to read about your glamorous lives and imagine themselves in your position, or sometimes even imagine themselves as your friend. Taking part in this builds your fame, and your fame builds your marketability and your earning potential. If you don't want to live in the media spotlight, be a plumber, not a rock star/actor/model.

(FYI, this is not Eddie's rule. It was the advice I screamed at my TV back in the 90s when he was bitching about the publicity problem with Pearl Jam's meteoric rise to fame. Judging by the recent history of PJ, perhaps he could hear me. Can we adopt has-been rock stars, too?)

Comments

Pam said…
Preach it, sister.
Megan said…
If we get to adopt has-been rock stars, I'm totally fighting you for Eddie Vedder!

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