The election is over, and Paris Hilton has won.
The background, in a nutshell: Last week, John McCain debuted an ad accusing Barack Obama of being “the biggest celebrity in the world,” which is supposedly a criticism. The ad juxtaposed Obama’s image with pictures of Britney Spears and Hilton. The Hilton family, which it turns out had donated to McCain’s campaign, was rather miffed that the candidate repaid them by using their daughter as a campaign joke. Tuesday, Will Ferrell’s funnyordie.com posted Paris’ rebuttal, which has been embedded at every politics site on the planet, but which I reproduce here for the historical record and to make Ferrell slightly richer than he already is:
As of this writing, three million more people have watched Hilton’s video at funnyordie than have watched McCain’s video at YouTube. (I’m not counting ad buys or free-media replays on TV of course, but the most attentive audience is the one that seeks you out.)
Paris wins. What does this mean?
For starters, that many more people have heard Paris Hilton’s arguments on America’s energy policy than John McCain’s (which made up the issues portion of his “Celeb” ad). While I’m usually skeptical about the hand-wringers who worry that too many young people are getting their news from The Daily Show, this means the serious possibility that people out there believe that Argument X or Y about the energy crisis is true because the chick from The Simple Life said so. The New Republic went to the trouble of rebutting Paris Hilton’s statements about offshore drilling, noting that drilling would, like, totally not yield enough oil in time to “[carry] us until the new technologies kick in.”
It also proves there’s a celebrity corollary to the old adage about never wrestling with a pig: Never get in a media feud with a celebrity. You each make a spectacle of yourself, and the celebrity likes it. (And a corollary to that corollary: Paris Hilton has far better handlers / media strategists than Britney Spears does.)
And it finally proves what is quickly becoming The First Law of Viral Video: If you want to get people to pay attention to anything, get a hot woman to say it. Not just about drilling. (Or drilling.) But also vocabulary. Or sharing digital photos. Or the possibility of life on Mars. Or Republican policies on gay marriage. If a hot woman doesn’t say it, it’s like no one ever said it at all.
Jon Stewart, beware. Hot women are the new you.