Robert: I tell you, this election season has been fun. I cannot remember having anything like this amount of fun four years ago when John Kerry was challenging George W. Bush. Was it that Kerry was boring? That Bush was also boring? Is it that the Hillary-Obama contest made following this race so interesting? Or is it fun because I’m a Democrat and the Democrats are clearly on the upswing in the polls with a Republican president at a 20-percent approval rating? The media environment is changing at warp-speed and I wonder if the further advance of the Internet has added to the fun of following campaigns.

 

 Paula: I suppose it depends upon what your definition of fun is, to borrow some phrasing from the master of fun. Yes, I have been more stimulated to talk about this campaign than in the past, and it’s true that lunch and dinner conversations have been a lot more lively. But I wonder if there isn’t something sort of macabre, creepy really, about having so much fun parsing, comparing, teasing out meanings as they pertain to the candidates. On the Democratic side at least, I think that Hillary and Barack had so many elements that lent themselves to close reading that this generated an avalanche of stuff to write about and talk about. Please note, for example, that as I wrote the line above I paused to make sure I was being symmetrical in using their first names — you didn’t do that above, and I could, if I wanted, take offense (but I won’t). What I mean is that maybe our desire to have semiotic fun is really kind of perverse, that we’re straying from essentials, core values and beliefs, into the thicket of endless signifiers — having fun at the expense of “truth.” Does all the fun add up to meaningful debate? And is it possible any longer to have meaningful debate that leads to sound conclusions and inspires good judgment?

 

Robert: It does seem awfully difficult to have a meaningful debate on issues. I’m not sure I even know what that looks like anymore. But have we ever had that in this country? Right now, the heat of discussion is on language and emphasis and fairness and all of that. Maybe it will lead us eventually to the good stuff. I also think this is part of the hyper-awareness of public relations and celebrity of our time. Everybody has a website. Everyone has a Facebook page. Everyone responds to emails instantaneously. Everyone’s a narcissist, hyper-sensitive to what others are saying that might relate to them.

Oh, I did call Senator Clinton by her first name and Senator Obama by his last name. That is an asymmetry. Frankly, I feel permitted to call Senator Clinton “Hillary” because her recent campaign highlighted her first name. But I see the point. It doesn’t sound like you were really offended, though, just using the example to make your point.

 

Paula: You’re right. I was making my point that part of the so-called “fun” is being able to pick on little things like that. I suppose it’s always been done, and now I’m going to reverse myself and say that to try to separate the “good stuff,” as you put it, from the small nitpicking stuff is probably impossible. Maybe the Hillary-Obama asymmetry is trivial in some respects; in others, it’s not. It speaks to a whole history of gender inequality and can be compared to the outrage that was felt when Obama was referred to as “kid” — a reference too close to “boy” for comfort, loaded with all the historical racial baggage attached to that word. Referring to women by their first names has the baggage of the 1950s secretarial pool (btw, don’t forget to watch the new season of Mad Men — I’m going to want to discuss that).

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