Stars, Sex and Gimmickry
Last week, Ashton Kutcher took a break from canoodling with Demi Moore to appear with Sen. John Edwards in Iowa and Minnesota. Each time the "Dude, Where's My Car?" dude charged President Bush with punking the citizenry, receptive crowds reportedly shouted back, "True dat!"
Meanwhile, Bad Boy rapper Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' understated "Vote or Die!" slogan echoes through the battleground states he's been touring. "If you talking about flexing your power, and you ain't flexing in the swing states, then you ain't flexing your power," he told Associated Press.
Reluctant voters have nowhere to hide these days, as Bruce Springsteen's "Vote for Change" tour prods them, the country musicians of "Your Country, Your Vote" spur them and less-heralded acts use every manner of crackpot stunt to wheedle relentlessly.
This summer's "Just Vote" tour, for example, was powered not by baby-boom rockers but vegetable oil, as Bay Area bands Aphrodesia and Rock Me Pony chased down unregistered slackers in a van fueled by used corn and soybean grease. The Armenian National Committee of America's pro-John Kerry tour seeks to wring votes from people with names ending in "ian." In the swing state of New Mexico -- which George W. Bush lost in 2000 by only 366 votes -- caravans of "lowriders" will accompany coveted Latino voters to the polls. And in Florida, transvestites have launched a "Drag Out the Vote" campaign.
Many organizations are exporting people and ideas from solidly red or blue states into those of a less-certain shade. For example, the Downtown for Democracy political action committee, or D4D, is sending hip, young New Yorkers by van to Ohio, disseminating "free designer T-shirts, free drinks, political art and music." New York magazine summarized the pros and cons of D4D's approach: "Advantages: Free designer T-shirts, free drinks. Disadvantages: Political art and music."
Democrats and Republicans kicked more traditional get-out-the-vote efforts into overdrive after the too-close vote of 2000. But if the election is decided by a narrow margin, the media's post-victory spotlights are not likely to fall on the church, club and union stalwarts who nag door-to-door or by phone bank.
Credit will more likely go to fans of the much-missed TV show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" who rallied voters and raised money for Kerry at a multi-venue event they called "High Stakes" -- the stake being Buffy's bloodsucker-killing weapon of choice.
