Tuesday, September 2, 2008

This Can't be Good for Republicans, Can It?

As adroit as the McCain campaign has been over the past month, they could not be happy about this kind of publicity (HT: The Page). US Magazine, the weekly journal of political and literary commentary, features the Republican VP selection on its cover with the ominous title "Babies, Lies, and Scandal."



Over the last few election cycles we've been seeing what Henry Jenkins calls convergence between politics and popular culture, but this is a new plateau for presidential politics. What does this type of convergence do to the political process when popular culture? Does this humanize her in a way that attracts new voters? Does it frame her in a way that focuses on Palin as a mother rather than Palin as a professional politician? I suspect there are going to be multiple framing and re-framing of each of the candidates in the election. It will be interesting to see how the Republican party handles all of this during their convention. Will they paint her as a victim of a scandal obsessed culture? Or will they ignore the coverage and build upon their own framing of her?

1 comment:

King Politics said...

No, but they'll spin it so it reads positives. Abstinence-only education is in...unless you get pregnant, which is cool if you're somewhat wealthy and white... I can only imagine the reaction if this were to happen to Obama's girls when they're older.