httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxJyPsmEask&feature=player_embedded
Let’s talk about first impressions. When I’m suddenly confronted with the image of a woman looming in a featureless null-space, the most reassuring thing she can say to me is not, “I’m not a witch.” Behold Christine O’Donnell, starting from scratch. She’s nothing you’ve heard—a statement immediately punctuated by the appearance of the words “Christine O’Donnell” next to her. Clearly, we are rebuilding Candidate O’Donnell from the ground up. She’s done some experimenting, she’s shopped around, and she’s finally settled on an identity that she thinks she likes: yours.
It’s hard to say what’s most disturbing about this commercial, besides the part where a woman speaking at 90% speed calmly explains that she is me. Maybe it’s the subtly undulating background. Maybe it’s the look of childlike concentration she adopts between :06 and :12, culminating in the lilt of satisfied relief
when she reaches the end of the spot’s only compound sentence.* Or maybe it’s just that she sounds uncannily like Betty Draper. Whatever it is, I have two visceral responses to this spot:
1) None of us is perfect, you witch.
2) Here is a woman who has assessed the voting population.
Whether rightly or not, Christine O’Donnell has decided that people are going to vote for whichever candidate they most identify with. I realize that sounds fairly obvious, but consider how directly this commercial addresses that project. It doesn’t just refrain from taking any political positions; it refrains from alluding to any political positions. Even the sentence fragment, “politicians who think spending, trading favors, and back-room deals are the way to stay in office,” speaks only an inchoate opposition to incumbents.
That’s not unusual. Particularly in state-level elections, candidates run on their personalities all the time. But O’Donnell doesn’t make the standard claims about integrity, hard work and dedication to the good people of Delaware. Instead, she is pure negation. She’s nothing you’ve heard. She’s not perfect—nobody is.*
And she’s against what’s going on in Washington, whatever that might be.
Into this empty vessel is poured, um, you. Someone either told Christine O’Donnell that voters identify with her or told her that they think she’s weird, and she’s decided to solve that problem the way a dictionary solves an egg. Without telling us anything about herself—at pains, in fact, to erase even the little information we thought we had—Christine O’Donnell has made one simple assertion. She is you.
It’s a remarkable gambit. It presumes that the absence of any sort of evidence or even argument won’t be a handicap—that it will, in fact, be a strength. Christine O’Donnell is you because she told you so. You know that’s true, because you are the kind of person who will believe whatever a pretty white lady tells you.
If that seems uncharitable, consider what got her here. O’Donnell has run for Senate twice before. This year, she won the Republican nomination, despite having been exposed as a liar, pilloried as a religious nutjob and investigated for improper financial reporting. It so happens that her most successful year ever has been the one in which all these bad things happened, plus a national movement of Christian white people rose up in anger at our first black President.
Those people swept her to the nomination, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t sweep her into office. So yeah, Christine O’Donnell is you. You can see that right there in the commercial, because all you really need to know about her is that she’s a white woman in a business suit. Not a witch? Check. Nice teeth? Check. I think we should go with her. Frankly, I heard the other guy is a politician.
You can bet that’s the way O’Donnell makes her decisions, unless you prefer to imagine her staying up nights in her townhouse with a glass of Malbec, poring over position papers. We know who Christine O’Donnell is: she’s a mildly batty lady who bases her decisions on her gut, the Bible, and a vague sense of what someone like her would do. Ironically, the November election won’t be a referendum on her. It’ll be a referendum on you.
Perhaps that’s why we’re all watching this election in Delaware so closely: because it’ll provide us with a numerical reckoning of how many Christine O’Donnells are out there. She’s made her position clear: you can trust her, she’ll undo everything, she’s mad at the government, too. She’s going to go to Washington and do what you’d do, whatever the hell that is. Chances are, it’s assure everyone that you’re the person for the job, and the other guy isn’t, and we’re all going to be fine as long as we don’t get bogged down thinking about it. Christine O’Donnell is not a witch.
She’s a car!
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ5M11m9vI0
Dan, your comparison of O’Donnell to “Christine” the killer car is quite frankly, hysterically awesome.
I second Pete F. How did you get to the Christine video (car looming in featureless null-space) so quickly? Have you been waiting for a chance to use it? Hilarious.
Christine O’Donnell is in an interesting spot, because she needs to complete three conflicting objectives to win. First, she has to avoid talking to reporters about anything substantive (as sub-point, she’ll probably also need to weasel out of debating Coons, but I bet that’ll be easy). Second, she must still somehow remain visible for the next month. Fox News will be her lifeline here. Third, she has to prevent the non-Fox media from labeling her a cowardly idiot-liar for spending an entire month avoiding them. This is the most difficult point, considering that she’s already a bit of a joke.
If she can get this done, she’ll beat Coons. She’s already one of the most recognizable people in America, and it’s not like there aren’t already people stupider than her in the Senate (i.e. James Inhofe).
I’m not sure which should be more offensive to CO’s potential constituents: the implication that they _believe_ in witches, or the implication–clearly discriminatory–that witches are unfit for public office. Since when was it acceptable to malign that demographic? Screw all those educated, employed, non-white, male, and/or masturbating Delawareans (?)–who will represent the witches?
If she’s not a witch, what is she going to be for Halloween? She hasn’t got long left to plan her outfit.
Any commentary/thoughts on the trend of conservative woman/wingnuts branding themselves by first-name only? I just got back from California, and both Carly “Carly” Fiorina and Meg “Meg” Whitman are doing it.
Is that some sort of post- and/or anti-feminist softening mechanism? Or is it the opinion of their (no doubt bald and hypertensive) campaign consultants that womankind’s place in state and national politics so novel that there can’t possibly be another Christine, Carly, or Meg to confuse them with?