{"id":5543,"date":"2008-10-13T08:57:11","date_gmt":"2008-10-13T08:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5543"},"modified":"2008-10-13T08:57:11","modified_gmt":"2008-10-13T08:57:11","slug":"celebrity-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5543","title":{"rendered":"celebrity politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My blog posts (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/mt\/archives\/2007\/04\/celebrity-cultu.html\">one<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterlevine.ws\/mt\/archives\/2007\/07\/celebrity-cultu-1.html\">two<\/a>) about celebrity politics&#8211;written before the 2008 election season began&#8211;caught the attention of USA Today writer Maria Puente, who quotes me in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/life\/people\/2008-10-09-politics-entertainment_N.htm\">an article <\/a>that starts, &#8220;Sometimes you have to wonder if the presidential candidates are running to be First Celebrity \u2014 or maybe Entertainer of the Year.&#8221; She writes:<\/p>\n<ul>Peter Levine, a scholar of civic learning at Tufts University in Boston who blogs about politics and celebrity, says that when candidates do something policy-related, it doesn&#8217;t get as much attention as, say, an argument over lipstick on a pig. &#8220;One interpretation is that this is not the candidates&#8217; fault because substantive stuff does not pay,&#8221; Levine says. &#8220;Lipstick got more attention than McCain&#8217;s education plan.* There are big incentives for politicians to act like celebrities, but it&#8217;s bad for our politics.&#8221;<\/ul>\n<p>(I&#8217;m on a roll with USA Today. Last week, I was quoted in Jill Lawrence&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/politics\/election2008\/2008-05-05-young-voters_n.htm?loc=interstitialskip\">cover story on young voters<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>*I actually meant Obama&#8217;s education plan, which was released on the same day as the lipstick-on-pig flap. But the point holds either way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My blog posts (one and two) about celebrity politics&#8211;written before the 2008 election season began&#8211;caught the attention of USA Today writer Maria Puente, who quotes me in an article that starts, &#8220;Sometimes you have to wonder if the presidential candidates are running to be First Celebrity \u2014 or maybe Entertainer of the Year.&#8221; She writes: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5543\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}