Did voters in Ohio think Kerry campaigner Bruce Springsteen was a Big Fat Obnoxious Boss?
That’s what Gayle Free and Laura Raposa of the Boston Herald suggest in a piece that asks: “Could it be that the ex-White House hopeful was the victim of celebrity backlash????”
George W. Bush won with both Hollywood and Big Media doing all they could to help his opponent. Formidable opposition, but could it be that neither group is all that helpful anymore?
The article suggests that having Fahrenheit 9/11’s Michael Moore on the campaign trail isn’t really such a dandy idea if you?re running outside of Malibu and Manhattan:
“‘Someone like Moore tried to galvanize people against Bush, but in fact energized the evangelicals,’ [Emerson College Professor Gregory Payne] said.
“Even P. Diddy, who started up Citizens Change, the group behind the ever-so-creative ‘Vote or Die’ campaign, had second thoughts about his slagging of the Commander-in-Chief.
“Apparently, P. realized, albeit a little late in the game, that yelling to the masses to get Dubya’s ‘ass out of office’ wasn’t, as his incarcerated pal Martha Stewart would say, a good thing.
“‘I was a little reckless with my comments, to be honest,’ Diddy told MTV News on Election Day. ‘I learned a lot in this process. I learned that my power could be used better. Instead of attacking Bush, it would be better to light a flame under young Americans and let them make the decisions.'”
How long before somebody in the Kerry campaign says it was Karl Rove who got the celebrities to campaign for Kerry? We’re just waiting…
Meanwhile, Inkwell is planning a Karl Rove Did It Round Up in the near future–we’re looking for examples of nefarious acts that have been attributed to Rove–i.e., Walter Cronkite’s saying Rove was behind the late-breaking Osama bin Laden video, or Wonkette’s charge that Rove orchestrated the misleading exit polls (unlike Cronkite, Wonkette may have been kidding). If you have a Karl Rove Did It example, please click on the letters section and let us have it.