Cornbread Politics: Sideshows and Sensationalism

By Jeff Jay

Thursday, August 5 marked the end of relentless, direct and, sometimes, inflammatory political advertisements in Tennessee, Vanderbilt’s home state.  Numerous primary elections were held across the state, but the headlining event was the primary held to determine the Republican nomination for Tennessee’s upcoming gubernatorial election in November.  Bill Haslam, Knoxville mayor and prominent state businessman, secured the nomination in a landslide victory over U.S. Representative Zach Wamp and Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, but odds are that, unless you are a resident of Tennessee, you do not know anything about these politicians.  However, I am willing to bet that, at the very least, you have heard someone mention the name Basil Marceaux in the last few weeks.

Marceaux has become something of a celebrity since Nashville’s local NBC affiliate allowed him to speak on his “campaign platform” during an evening news broadcast.  I use the term “campaign platform” very loosely, as in the video Marceaux asserts his plan for economic improvement includes planting “grass or vegetation across the state where any vacant lot [sic] and sell it for gas so we can use it for our expenses,” while he summarizes his stance on the Second Amendment as, “I’d like to recall… all… permit… and registration… for guns.”  These incoherent babblings, along with assorted footage of Marceaux, can now be found on YouTube and other video hosting websites.  In fact, Marceaux became such a viral sensation with the help of a feature of The Colbert Report that, on August 2, he appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live as a guest.

Obviously, no one should be surprised that Basil Marceaux did not win the Republican nomination for Tennessee’s upcoming gubernatorial election.  According to The Tennessean, Marceaux received a meager 3,520 votes, nearly 100 times fewer than the GOP victor, Haslam.  Unfortunately, it should also not be surprising that Marceaux received obscene amounts of unwarranted national media attention.  Really, any amount of attention paid to his “candidacy” for governor was too much.  The sensation which developed around Marceaux is now considered old hat for most Americans, as we are now accustomed to the swift ascension of so-called political stories which are, in truth, irrelevant to the workings of government.

Sure, many viewed Marceaux merely as a source of entertainment (as did I, albeit briefly), but that in and of itself is an important point: the line between entertainment and news is now blurred.  This is not a new revelation, especially for those who now watch ESPN only to be bombarded with quotes from athletes’ Twitter accounts presented as legitimate “news” or those who open a copy of USA Today to find a story about Snooki’s recent arrest.  Often, knowledge of relevant concerns, such as Bill Haslam’s policy stances and Elena Kagan’s political leanings are unknown to the average American citizen, while the happenings of reality television stars such as Snooki, who have not accomplished anything notable, are now ingrained in the public’s conscious.

As I stated earlier, the Basil Marceaux phenomenon is neither shocking nor out-of-the norm.  In a culture which processes and discards pseudo-celebrities and public figures at an embarrassing rate, Marceaux will be forgotten in a few weeks.  However, when potential voters spend time researching Google Videos for another Basil Marceaux, the implication is that legitimate political research is being neglected.  Distractions such as Basil Marceaux need to be avoided at all costs in this current political environment.