At Tue, 06 Apr 1999 08:59:37 -0400, you wrote:
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>joe dees wrote:
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>> At Sun, 4 Apr 1999 18:22:22 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:
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>> >> It is also reasonable to assume that when one is electing one's leaders,
>> >> that bad publicity is not necessarily better than none, and pro wrestlers
>> >> are notorious dissemblers.
>> >
>> >It is not reasonable to assume that, and it's irrelevant here anyway
>> >because the bad reputation you impute to wrestlers does not exist.
>> >They are merely entertainers, and everyone knows that, and they have
>> >no more of a reputation for lying than a fiction author or filmmaker
>> >would. I am sure Mr. Ventura's grass-roots campaigning and charming
>> >personaility in the debates put him over the top in this election:
>> >but he wouldn't have been there at all without the name recognition he
>> >got from being an entertainer. How many of those voters he swayed
>> >in the debate would have even watched the show if he had been Harold
>> >Schwartz, accountant from St. Paul?
>> >
>> If Harold Schwartz, accountant from St. Paul, was sufficiently inspiring in his college speeches to get earnest young university volunteers to work for his election, sufficiently politically adept to get a third party nomination and wangle that status and his grassroots-cultivated support into participation in the debates, and sufficiently articulate and reasonable sounding to win them (many eventual voters watch them regardless of the number of participants), you'd be calling him Gov. Harold Schwartz.
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>You are really living in la la land aren't you? If you don't have a name with preexisting brand recognition in a large percentage of the people's mind, then you aren't going to get a party nomination of any kind. No party wants to back a no name loser, having a celebrity status of some kind gets you automatic free publicity with the media. If you aren't a celebrity already, you'd better have a long record of other public exposure, either as a journalist, a state bureaucrat, a big business owner, etc. Even Jesse Ventura had to have served as Mayor of his hometown first to gain credibility. Sonny Bono was likewise a Mayor before he ran for congress (and a congressional district is much easier to campaign in than a whole state). Ronald Reagan got elected as governor of California based on his acting career. The only other position he held before that was as president of the Actors Guild. Any experienced politician will tell you, if you haven't got a NAME, you ain't got s***.
Every somebody not born to other somebodies was a nobody once. In my own district in NW Florida, Joe Scarborough (whom I do not like), a lawyer and failed rock musician of whom practically no one had heard, did credibly in the debates and was elected to Congress. Now he's a semi-regular on Politically Incorrect and poised to ascend the political ladder.
Joe E. Dees
Poet, Pagan, Philosopher