Stars in Their Eyes: In the Age of Obama and Palin, Glamour Matters But So Does Substance (On Senator Barack Obama, Governor Sarah Palin, And on Pseudoevents‪)‬

Watching images of Barack Obama, Britney Spears, and Paris Hilton intermingling on the "Celeb" commercial and seeing Tina Fey out-Palin Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live," one could be excused for thinking of this year's presidential contest as a spectacular "pseudoevent," the term historian Daniel Boorstin coined in his 1961 classic The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Boorstin claimed America was living in an "age of contrivance," in which illusions and fabrications had come to dominate society. Public life, he argued, has become filled with staged events that stand in for actual happenings. These counterfeit scenes are replete with counterfeit people--celebrities--whose identities are scripted to create storylines that have little relation to reality.