BRITNEY SPEARS, PARIS HILTON AND CHARLIE CHAPLIN,

WOULD THEY VOTE FOR OBAMA OR McCAIN?

- September 8, 2008

A presidential advertisement run by the McCain campaign compared Barack Obama's popularity with the celebrity of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Images of Obama were juxtaposed with bimbo like poses of Britney and Paris. The Republican camp has been hitting on the theme that Obama is more celebrity than presidential material. The above mentioned ad was aimed to trivialize Obama's drawing power among many Americans as well as global citizens. The Democratic Party cried cheap smear and the media could not help itself replaying the McCain commercial. Few ˙asked though how Britney Spears and Paris Hilton felt about the implicit smear upon them, a point especially made more fascinating by past support for the Republican Party by both young women, or at least their respective families.

GIVE PRESIDENT BUSH THE BENEFIT OF DOUBT IN EVERY DECISION

Britney Spears was very public in offering her support for President George W. Bush, as well as his decision to go to war. In a CNN interview dated September 4, 2003, Britney offered the following succinct view:

"Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."

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When asked: "Do you trust this President?" Britney responded: "Yes I do."

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Perhaps after her own travails and fall from the establishment grace, the ostracized Britney may have changed her mind. We really do not know. (We should acknowledge that Britney was voted 3 awards at the recent Sunday night MTV Awards, after an embarrassing performance the previous year). Regardless, it is not likely that either McCain or Obama will actively seek or accept her political endorsement.

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Paris Hilton was lampooned in the same political add by candidate McCain. Paris responded with her own television commercial spoofing McCain's presidential ad. It came across as a clever effort to exploit the not so flattering notoriety for her own benefit, by trying to show herself off as a woman with both a sense of humor and greater intellect. (Paris Hilton offered in her own spoof advertisement that she was ready to be a candidate for President, as she posed in a bikini on a beach chair).

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Maybe the counter video spoof ad that Paris filmed was directed by her parents. Ma Kathy Hilton, who with her husband and Paris's father, is a staunch McCain supporter initially voiced dismay that her chosen candidate had projected their daughter's image in not such a positive light.

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Paris has wisely not voiced her political endorsement. The Hilton parents did express that McCain's Britney/Paris ad was a waste of campaign contributions, including presumably their own, which was the maximum allowable by law and made well before the initial McCain ad aired. It would be interesting to know now if the "adult" Hilton's be such enthusiastic supporters of the McCain campaign today after the ad, or if they will actually vote for him.

CELEBRITY AND PREGNANCY

When Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney Spears' little sister announced last December, then aged 16, that she was pregnant, there was much critical talk directed at her mother Lynne. A conservative evangelical publisher put off Lynne's book on parenting. Her credentials as a good mother became very much in question, at least within the bible belt. Even a Republican adviser to Candidate McCain openly questioned Lynne's qualifications as mother to Britney and Jamie Lynn.

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Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, soon after being selected, became exposed to her own questions of credentials for good motherhood as it became known that daughter Bristol was pregnant and unwed. The issue probably posed many interesting considerations, or at least introspectives for our American society, even as some argued that this was a purely private matter for the Palin family and especially Bristol.

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However, the issue was defused, at least as far as most conservative religionists were concerned when it was revealed that Palin's daughter Bristol would choose to have the baby. She instantly was hailed as a leader in the "right to life" battle. When this was followed by another announcement that the teen couple was to be married, the newlyweds to be, Bristol and boyfriend Levi, were placed on the Republican Party Convention stage alongside Palin and McCain.

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The conforming couple seemed in a daze as the delegates rained applause upon them. No one asked anymore if this was an appropriate response to premarital sex or teen pregnancy and if this might appear like encouragement for risky teen behavior by giving them immediate celebrity treatment. More importantly for Bristol and Levi, no one appeared much concerned whether the couple was well suited or if this was an arranged marriage or at least dictated by campaign strategy.

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No matter though, Jamie Lynn Spears, who had not met the couple, announced that she was sending a baby gift to the parents to be, selected from a Hollywood boutique. Jamie Lynn can not yet vote so perhaps this was a gift of solidarity, although I'm not certain what recently single mom Jamie Lynn shares with Bristol, except a moment of passion and now celebrity.

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I DID NOT KNOW CHARLIE CHAPLIN WAS JEWISH!

Charlie Chaplin actually was not Jewish. He just refused to deny that he was Jewish after Adolf Hitler accused him of being a “filthy Jew!” Chaplin believed that if he denied being a Jew,

even if he was not, that somehow this would add credence to Hitler’s vilification of Jews.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama and his campaign have

not learned from Chaplin’s example. They have been proactive

in denying that Obama is a Muslim, even as racists and haters have been behind the “accusation.” Obama is entirely correct in

pressing to the forefront his Christian beliefs and church attendance. However, if he goes to the next step by denying being a Muslim, he then risks providing at least implicit support for the notion that Muslims do not belong to the American fabric.

This is a grave danger for the inclusive vision of America as well as Obama’s own campaign in securing the active support of the core of diverse voters that are essential for his election.

Perhaps the nature of America’s uniqueness is that so many of

us Americans have such a diversity of identities in our persons.

We cannot define ourselves by who we are not, except if we

revert back to the slave days when a hint of African blood was

enough to designate a person both as a non-citizen and as

another person’s property. By this rancid test a father no longer was to his son or daughter, but now he was their owner. Obama undoubtedly has Africans and Europeans, blacks and whites, Christians and Muslims in his gene pool. His background includes association with Asians and Jews and atheists and the very faith conscience. I do not need to have him tell me what he is not, but we can learn more on the basis of who he is and willing to be. ˙

Muhamed Sacirbey

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Mr. Muhamed Sacirbey holds B.A. degree in history and J. D. degree from Tulane University in New Orleans. He also holds M.B.A. degree from Columbia University. Prior to becoming Bosnia’s Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United Nations, he practiced as an attorney in New York City and worked for several years as an investment banker. He presently writes his book “A Convenient Genocide, in a fishbowl ” and is a commentator on human rights and political issues.

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