Did McCain Create an HDTV Monster?

[babylonsister]

http://www.slate.com/id/2191704/

Did McCain Create an HDTV Monster?
The technology he helped bring to market could kill his candidacy.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, May 19, 2008, at 7:57 PM ET


Marie Curie died from exposure to radium, her greatest discovery. Jim Fixx, who sold Americans on the health benefits of running, was killed by a heart attack at 52. To this roster of ironic demise we may soon add John McCain, the Senate's pre-eminent champion of high-definition TV.

As Senate commerce committee chairman in 1998, and later as the committee's highest-ranking Republican in 2002, McCain excoriated broadcasters for transitioning too slowly to HDTV after the government had given away billions of dollars in HDTV frequencies. In 2007, McCain complained that a congressionally mandated deadline of Feb. 17, 2009, to abandon the old analog spectrum was "too late" and introduced legislation to yank that spectrum from broadcasters and turn it over to police, medical, and other public-safety personnel. If it weren't for McCain's ceaseless agitating on this issue, HDTV probably wouldn't have anywhere near its present estimated penetration of roughly 11 percent of all U.S. households. High-definition TVs are not yet a mass-market consumer product, but they've become sufficiently ubiquitous in sports bars, offices, malls, and other public spaces that most Americans have likely had a gander at the new technology. Prices have dropped below $1,000, and if your analog TV happens to get fried during an electrical storm (as happened to me last year), you may find that your local electronics store now sells digital only. This is great news for McCain the consumer champion but terrible news for McCain the presidential candidate.

Last year, when McCain's candidacy appeared to be in serious trouble, you heard a lot about how awful he looked. He'd gotten old, his face was scarred from melanoma surgery; no wonder his presidential run was headed south. Then McCain started racking up primary victories, and his telegenic deficit was forgotten. I don't watch TV news much—with two kids, who has the time?—and what news clips I see tend to be off the Web. On cable-news sites and YouTube, McCain looked fine to me.

Then, on May 17, I watched Saturday Night Live with my kids. McCain appeared in close-up in a mildly amusing skit whose purpose (at least from McCain's perspective) was to remove the age issue from voters' minds by turning it into a joke. It worked for Ronald Reagan in 1984; why shouldn't it work for McCain in 2008? With me, though, it had the exact opposite effect. As someone who'd pooh-poohed the age issue, I found myself gasping at McCain's mug as transmitted in glorious HDTV. Wrinkles, blotches, liver spots, scarry tissue—none of these were hidden by McCain's makeup. As McCain cracked wise ("What do we want in our next president? Certainly someone who is very, very, very old."), I found myself thinking, Jeez, he doesn't look like a guy who'll turn 72 this August. He looks like a guy who'll turn 82. (Note to reader: The link I provide to the SNL skit won't give you any sense of what I'm talking about, because the clip isn't high-definition.)

For all I know, McCain is in fine physical condition. If he appears older than his chronological age, that probably has something to do with the torture he endured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam; nine years ago the Arizona Republic reported that he continued to experience "orthopedic limitations" related to his imprisonment, including pain in his shoulders and right knee. But TV is unfair, as Richard Nixon learned when his perspiration and five o'clock shadow helped give John F. Kennedy the edge in the first-ever televised presidential debates. (Had HDTV been available eight years later, I'm not sure Nixon could have won the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency.) And it turns out I'm not the only person who's noticed HDTV's cruel effect on McCain's puss. Atlantic blogger Matthew Yglesias speculated on March 2 that "more pixels-per-inch isn't going to serve McCain's cause very well." On April 11, Switched.com observed that while HDTV brought out Hillary Clinton's wrinkles and McCain's melanoma scars, all it did to Barack Obama was accentuate the veins on his forehead. About a week later, Politico's Michael Calderone had more or less the same thought while watching McCain in high-def on This Week With George Stephanopoulos. (Memo to the McCain campaign: CBS's Face the Nation and NBC's Meet the Press won't upgrade to high-def this year, and therefore might be safer venues through November.) Gelf magazine noted the phenomenon on April 25. Most of these sources cited Phillip Swan, president of TVPredictions.com, who in 2006 took the trouble to rate five leading Republican and five leading Democratic contenders for president according to how they looked on HDTV. In retrospect, Swan's ratings indicate that at least during the primaries, looking good on HDTV was not a major factor. John Edwards got four smiley faces to Hillary Clinton's two; Obama, who had yet to emerge as a serious candidate, wasn't on the list at all. On the Republican side, the surprise winner was Rudy Giuliani, with three smiley faces to McCain's one. But a lot of the debates weren't available on HDTV, and even when they were, a lot of people weren't paying attention. That isn't true anymore.

The prevailing cliché about 2008 is that it's the first YouTube election. But it may turn out to be, more saliently, the first high-definition election. If that's the case, then McCain—more precisely, McCain's political ambition—will play the unfortunate role of Dr. Frankenstein, whose lifeless body at the end of Mary Shelly's novel is wept over by the demon he created. Across the land, LCD and plasma screens will wail in unison, "I have devoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love and admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that irremediable ruin." But doesn't Obama look fabulous?

[Dogmudgeon]

1. It wasn't so bad

I saw it in HD myself, and thought McCain looked okay. He even got a few laughs.

Of course, he's still a conservative from the batshit-crazy wing of the Republican party.

I guess it depends on what you're looking for. I consider looks to be of no importance in politics, but that's just me. We all look back to Nixon in 1960, but Kennedy was model-gorgeous and Nixon was whacked with the fugly stick. And Timothy Noah's eye just might be focused on another set of things than mine. HDTV could kill McCain ... or not.

--p!

[MsFlorida]

2. most republicans

all look like darth vader without the helmet....

Must be all that evil they keep inside

[C_U_L8R]

3. Ever see Mitt Romney in HD?

Yikes. What a bad dye job.

[DCKit]

4. His skin or his hair?

Neither looks natural, though if his dad was an oompa loompa....

[C_U_L8R]

5. Both

and where the two meet is a cosmetic disaster zone

[jpertello]

6. Melanoma

is usually fatal. There are very few melanoma survivors walking around. My sister died of melanoma at 51 after battling the disease through many treatments and surgeries for over 8 years.. The way John McCain looks and his often obvious lack of energy does not bode well for a man who hopes to handle the pressures of the presidency (which have proven to age men quite rapidly).
Please refer to this excellent article and personal account of melanoma by DUer tekisui:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3034045