A New Direction For Me (And For America)
I've decided that I'm going to stop blogging about substantive political issues and actually get down to the important things in life: fashion, image, and style. my new goal is to be the Joan Crawford of politics.
why? because fashion, image, and style matter, unfortunately, even in a serious political system. in a culture of sound bites and 30-second TV ads, what you look like and how you are perceived are just as important as what you say and/or believe (for reasons that escape me, politicians don't often match up the two). there's no doubt that ideas matter, of course, as they should. but I'm just too lazy and tired form my day job to deal with them all the time.
so what will this new blog cover? well, fashion, of course. like Nancy Pelosi's olive-green suit at the 2007 State of the Union. it's always fascinating to analyze people's choices in projecting images of themselves. how do fashion, image, and style affect politics and the exchange of ideas? there's a whole semester's worth of discussion to be had right there. in addition to these conscious choices, however, there are also stylistic factors that are without our control. like our names, for example. why did Dukakis lose to Bush? it wasn't because his policies sucked any more than Bush's. in an intelligent debate of ideas, Dukakis should have drawn much closer to Bush than he did. I think it was the landslide that it turned out to be because of his last name. America was not ready for a president whose name sounded vaguely like a combination of intimate body parts and functions (doo-kahk-kis...you tell me). Which, of course, implies certain things about America's readiness for non-White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant presidents, since it's more than likely that a non-WASP will have a last name other than Bush, Washington, Adams, or Smith (isn't it interesting that the closest we came to having a Smith was New York's Alfred in 1928, and he didn't win because he was too Catholic for the time?). thankfully, the times, they are a-changin'. you now have candidates like Bill Richardson who's half-Mexican but has a fully anglicized last name.
WHOA. curve ball.
these are interesting issues, and we'll be looking at them closely, starting with Joe Biden's presidential announcement.
but first, let me get back to my day job for a little bit.
why? because fashion, image, and style matter, unfortunately, even in a serious political system. in a culture of sound bites and 30-second TV ads, what you look like and how you are perceived are just as important as what you say and/or believe (for reasons that escape me, politicians don't often match up the two). there's no doubt that ideas matter, of course, as they should. but I'm just too lazy and tired form my day job to deal with them all the time.
so what will this new blog cover? well, fashion, of course. like Nancy Pelosi's olive-green suit at the 2007 State of the Union. it's always fascinating to analyze people's choices in projecting images of themselves. how do fashion, image, and style affect politics and the exchange of ideas? there's a whole semester's worth of discussion to be had right there. in addition to these conscious choices, however, there are also stylistic factors that are without our control. like our names, for example. why did Dukakis lose to Bush? it wasn't because his policies sucked any more than Bush's. in an intelligent debate of ideas, Dukakis should have drawn much closer to Bush than he did. I think it was the landslide that it turned out to be because of his last name. America was not ready for a president whose name sounded vaguely like a combination of intimate body parts and functions (doo-kahk-kis...you tell me). Which, of course, implies certain things about America's readiness for non-White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant presidents, since it's more than likely that a non-WASP will have a last name other than Bush, Washington, Adams, or Smith (isn't it interesting that the closest we came to having a Smith was New York's Alfred in 1928, and he didn't win because he was too Catholic for the time?). thankfully, the times, they are a-changin'. you now have candidates like Bill Richardson who's half-Mexican but has a fully anglicized last name.
WHOA. curve ball.
these are interesting issues, and we'll be looking at them closely, starting with Joe Biden's presidential announcement.
but first, let me get back to my day job for a little bit.
posted by K. Ian Shin | 8:02 AM
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