Presidential Ethno-blooperology: Performance Misfires in the Business of 'Message'-ing

摘要

In the spectator sport of American presidential politics a generally savored moment is the perception of a candidate's misfire or gaffe. Recorded, disseminated and reframed by evaluative commentary the mere blooper or would-be "out-take" is transformed. Whether or not it was an obvious blooper at the time, the gaffe is potentially turned into an index of something more deeply revelatory of personality, character, or identity. In our regime of "message" politics, it comes either to count as a symptomatic bit of truth about its maker, emergent with negative value despite all precaution of deliberate staging, or to count as the positively valuated, deliberately delivered telling blow that injures an opponent in the theatricalized political agon of "message." [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]