April might be the cruelest month, but August is the dumbest -- at least if you have the misfortune to be watching TV. It's not just that the shows are mostly reruns and nothing much happens in the news (except, OK, the occasional release of journalists from a North Korean prison sentence thanks to the diplomacy of an ex-president).
It's that, with relatively little else happening, the darndest people and causes tend to grab the spotlight. This time last year, we were hearing a lot about the Puma PAC, an obstreperous group of Hillary Clinton supporters who somehow believed that throwing their votes to John McCain showed more loyalty to Clinton and her issues than supporting the Democratic nominee. The year before that, there was the opportunistic display surrounding the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death -- that means you, Larry King. The year before that, Madonna fell off her horse and it seemed no one would shut up about it until Hurricane Katrina came along.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, August 08, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 25 Editorial pages Desk 1 inches; 34 words Type of Material: Correction
August personalities: Meghan Daum's column Thursday indicated that the year before the 10th anniversary of Princess Diana's death, in 2007, Madonna fell from a horse and Hurricane Katrina occurred. Those events happened in 2005.
You've heard the term "august personage." This refers to an eminent or venerable figure. I am hereby coining a slight and notably downscale variation on this label: the August personality.
Neither eminent nor venerable, August personalities are the unopposed candidates of the public sphere. They gain traction because they're just nonsensical and bizarre enough to fit the "man bites dog" profile and, oh yes, no one else bothered to show up. August personalities tend to have both an ax to grind and a chip on their shoulders. Undaunted by the foolishness of their 15 minutes, they are thrilled to be in the national media, no matter how low the vacation ratings go.
At any other time of the year, they'd be relegated to the outer limits of cable access and the Internet. But it being August and all, August personalities wind up on prime time. With all the shrinks out of town, the country goes a little bit crazy.
This year's August personality? Orly Taitz, the woman spearheading the campaign behind the apparently unvanquishable issue of President Obama's country of birth. A dentist/lawyer/real estate agent turned "eligibility activist" from Laguna Niguel, Taitz looks like a cross between Dr. Laura and Carol Channing and sounds like a 16-year-old Zsa Zsa Gabor fighting with her mom about her curfew. Her movement's mission, of course, is to show that the president was not born in Hawaii, as has been exhaustively proved by officials from that state, but in Kenya and is therefore ineligible to serve as commander in chief.
