Just like the first time and we may be starting over…Appeal to the base, get the first time voters off the couch and into the booth. Mother Lena Dunham will give them a basic anatomy course and stimulate the viral and vital fluids. Two minutes in a dimly lit booth with Mr. Hunka Hunka Obamster, rushing back in from a quick smoke. More hipsters tread-milling on another authenticity hoax. The Dems are bottom feeding, leveraging their oft-used and now frayed card of their unique relationship to popular culture with President Obama at the inflection point. And it does work, even if popular culture, – Pauline Kael: ” I didn’t know popular culture would be the only culture!”- is violent,excessive, misogynist, racist and a host of other qualities that run counter to the DNC’s ostensible political culture. It doesn’t matter. The medium, like McCluhan stated, or rather, the context itself, is the message. In a small but not insignificant way, the election is also a referendum on popular culture, our now Orwellian, but at one time just Adorno’s “culture industries” overblown to the point of being economically destructive; particularly when a pop culture icon like Obama appears to have absolutely no core beliefs, just a milquetoast attitude to one and all…
On her hit HBO show “Girls,” writer-creator-star Lena Dunham hasn’t been shy about talking about sex, life and her twentysomething generation. Her new pro-Obama video aims to be just as bold, or brazen, depending on where you’re coming from politically.
“Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody,” Dunham says in the spot. “You want to do it with a great guy.”…
She’s talking about voting. Or maybe sex. Or maybe both, depending on how private your voting booth is.
It should come as no surprise that in such a tight election, the clip, titled “Lena Dunham: Your First Time,” has sharply divided viewers. “Please don’t blame yourself for ending Obama’s campaign. (Read More:http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/tag/lena-dunham-your-first-time/
Walter Benjamin: There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees on single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The involvement of pop culture figures, such asWill.i.am or for that matter, the “Obama Girl” were closely linked to Obama’s success in motivating young voters to participate in the politic
rocess for the first time. What links do you and your contributors draw between the two?Yanes: I think one reason why pop culture figures drew the attention of young voters to Obama is because they understood how young people interact with new media. In my opinion, the main difference in behavior between those who rely on traditional media and those who rely on new media is that new media is constantly being thrown at consumers and is always available to be observed.
For example, if the “Obama Girl” video were to have been played on MTV at first, it would have never generated the attention it received. That would have required people to sit still long enough to watch MTV and then waiting for the video to show. Instead, people were able to see their friends post the video on their facebook page, and after seeing more and more friends discuss the video, they were then able to click on a link and watch the video for themselves. Regardless of what time it was or where they were at, new media allowed these pro-Obama ads to be available to consumers. This availability is something standard television networks can’t replicate yet. Read More:http://henryjenkins.org/2012/10/derrais-carter-and-nicholas-yanes-talk-about-iconic-obama-part-two.html
Hoping Obama doesn’t go “women lying in ponds and distributing swords,” and do a weekend bombing of Libya as an act of damage control. “Hey, we didn’t use drones, we did it the ole’ fashioned way…”