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Who would elect "an unfamiliar and dangerous other"?

There was a great deal of debate on TV and around the media last week regarding the McCain TV ad that compared Barak Obama to Paris Hilton – aren’t they both empty celebrities who are famous for being famous? (My previous)

Even putting aside the ridiculous accusations of racism, some of the reactions from Obama supporters don’t make sense. Consider this question:

How can someone being portrayed as "the biggest celebrity in the world" also be painted as radical and out of the mainstream? Either Obama is like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: a fluffy, substanceless, mass-consumed but empty celebrity-for-celebrity’s sake, or he is an unfamiliar and dangerous other with a hidden anti-American agenda.

Setting aside questions of whether we agree with the assertions themselves, I really don’t understand what is self-contradictory about asserting that Obama is both a celebrity and “an unfamiliar and dangerous other”. Is this guy is asserting that the basis for celebrity is familiarity and normality?

Maybe his family and his neighborhood are a little different from mine, but Paris Hilton is very much an "other" to people like me. I always thought the fascination with celebrities had to do with the various ways in which they are different from us. You know, the athletes who play better than we do, the actors who are better looking, the people who are just bizarre by the standards of the average American Joe. When somebody is famous for being famous (like Paris Hilton, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Kevin Federline and Kato Kaelin), it’s because they are not a part of mainstream America.

Perhaps the article is asserting that by being celebrities, these people become a part of the culture, and thus help to define “mainstream”. After all, we all know who these people are, even if there is no reason to. But I would hardly call that a reason to feel more comfortable with having a president who is mostly famous for being famous. I would much rather have somebody whose political track record is clear.

Again, this just doesn’t in any way negate the charge that Barak Obama is “an unfamiliar and dangerous other”.

By the way, allow me to point out that every presidential candidate tries to paint himself as a Man of the People, and his opponent as inherently unlike the average American Joe. John Kerry was constantly attacked as elitist (remember the Wendy’s episode, or the Teresa Heinz Kerry fortune?), as was Al Gore (policy wonk, elitist, unhumanly robotic). Hillary definitely remembers these episodes.

While Media Matters has complained that George W. Bush avoided charges of elitism, I think it’s clear he didn’t, as there were plenty of allegations of elitism when he ran in 2000. The problem for Democrats wasn’t that the media wouldn’t play along, but rather that it wasn’t a consistent message. Yes, he went to Yale and had a privileged political childhood, but Gore’s background was comparable. While some Democrats were complaining that Bush was elitist in avoiding Vietnam and having a history with drugs and alcohol, others were complaining that he was too much a hick, a huckleberry, and a cowboy—undoing the elitist tag with a partyboy buckaroo tag.

And think back to Bill Clinton’s campaigns. While Republicans tried to focus on how unscrupulous Clinton was in his personal life, he beat George H.W. Bush by being the guy you’d like to have a beer with. He played saxophone and spoke easily while Bush was derided for not knowing the price of a gallon of milk. Clinton managed to be more likeable than Dole, as well, painting Bob Dole as a likeable, respectable old guy who should go on now and retire while Bill had another beer with the country. Which, figuratively, he did.

We can keep going back. Reagan sauntered and joked easily. Kennedy upstaged Nixon on TV. Hell, go back nearly two centuries to when Andrew Jackson harped for four years about the “Stolen Election”, where he had won the popular vote but lost because of “elitist” political intrigue by supporters of John Quincy Adams.

The point is that both campaigns tried to assert that their opponent was an atypical American man - an elitist "other" in some way. Right now, Democrats are busy telling us that McCain is too old and too angry to be reliable. Republicans are telling us that Obama is too new and too slick. Neither narrative strikes me as being dominant yet, but they are both as ever trying to emphasize that the other guy is “an unfamiliar and dangerous other”.