Right Wing Cult of Personality

Have you ever noticed how many of the Republican candidates for political office are just warmed over celebrities.

• In Pennsylvania, the lone qualification of their '06 candidate for governor, Lynn Swann, was having been a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers;
• They are ga-ga in Massachusetts over the chances that Curt Schilling will run for Senate, even though he has said he will support Barack Obama (or John McCain) for President. In addition to his outstanding fastball, Shilling's main aptitude is his skill at the board wargame Advanced Squad Leader;
• Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning was a better pitcher than Schilling although he is apparently not smart enough to play games or apprear in a debate without his teleprompter;
• Mary Bono is repeatedly elected to Congress solely because she had once been married to Sonny Bono, who had been elected to Congress solely because he had once been married to Cher;
• Conservative icon, more like saint, Ronald Reagan was just a talented b-movie actor before being elected governor of California;
  
• California's current governor, Arnold I-can't-spell-his-name, was a more successful and less talented actor before his election.

Republicans love to ridicule liberal celebrities. From the Dixie Chicks (Shut Up and Sing) to Barbra Streisand, they are fixated on our celebrities - far more than liberals are. The only reason I know what the Dixie Chicks said is because right wingers kept repeating it to denounce them. I don't know what Alec Baldwin or Matt Damon think politically, although I'll wager there is not a single conservative blogger in the country who could not regale me with them in detail and how they have absolutely no right to say any such thing in public.

It is the nature of the rightwing beast. The same inclination towards an Imperial President drives their obsession with celebrities. Republicans have a serf/master view of the world. To Republicans, all that matters is status. A famous ballplayer has earned the right to political power while a brilliant professor is a petty proletariat. To Republicans, liberal celebrities have betrayed their class; that people of stature can hold liberal beliefs defies the basic order of their universe. It is the reason conservatives so often use the word treason to describe liberal celebrities.