Of all the strange things we kept hearing about Barack Obama back in 2008, by far the most perplexing was the frequent description of him as a “rock star.” The term connotes to us an egomaniacal, sexually perverted, drug-abusing, oddly-dressed flash-in-the-pan, which are hardly the qualities one desires in a president, but the people saying it always seemed to mean it as a compliment.
Presumably they meant Obama had some ineffable appeal to young people that enabled him to fill stadiums with worshipful admirers, which is yet another quality that we don’t necessarily desire in a president, but in any case they always seemed to believe that Obama is possessed of that special something that the kids call “cool.” The kids have been calling it that for at least the past 60 years, so perhaps the quotation marks are no longer necessary, but it should be made clear that they mean “cool” not as a synonym for calm and dispassionate but rather in the beatnik sense of being one hip daddy-o. We always found Obama rather snooty and sanctimonious and boring, but coolness is subjectively measured, and there’s no denying that an overwhelming majority of America’s 18-to-24-year-olds thought that voting for Obama in 2008 was the cool thing to do.
There seems to be some concern on the part of the Obama re-election campaign, however, that the youngsters won’t be voting for him by the same decisive margin this year. For some time now Obama has been giving his speeches almost exclusively at college campuses, and lately he’s even been taking his act to the late night talk shows that cater to the young insomniacs.
The reasons for concern are obvious. The continuing high rate of unemployment has disproportionately affected younger people, and the more attentive youths will find numerous other complaints with the Obama agenda. Surely at least some of Obama’s past voters will realize that the $5 trillion he added to the national debt during his first term will weigh most heavily on the younger generations, for instance, and they might even take a look at how various other Obama policies have disproportionately affected the young.
The effectiveness of Obama’s tactics to revive his past popularity with young America is less obvious. Half of the students at the colleges where Obama is giving speeches to will soon be either unemployed or working in a low-wage job requiring only a high school diploma, which explains why he’s playing smaller halls than he did during the last tour, and doing the rounds on the talk shows is better suited to pitching a new movie than another presidential term.
Most critics of Obama’s late night comedy act have argued that it is unpresidential, which is true, but the more pressing problem for him is that’s so very un-rock star. Back in the rock star heyday of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s no self-respecting would ever deign to sit and schmooze with some suit-and-tie-clad talk show host. In the era of three networks the talk shows were seeking a broader audience and wouldn’t have booked a rock band, anyway, but that was all the more reason for a rock star to avoid such squares. We’re told that the current crop of late night talk shows are hipper fare than what Johnny, Joey, and Dick used to offer, but over-exposure on even the hippest of them is bound to reduce the most celestial rock stars to mere celebrity status.
— Bud Norman
The Central Standard Times 