Will we elect a rock star as President?

There have been a lot of interesting story lines to emerge during the presidential campaign so far.

Last year, pundits and pollsters said Arizona Sen. John McCain had no chance to win the Republican nomination, but he has pulled off a remarkable comeback to earn that party's nod.

Also, many believed former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson would become a frontrunner in the Republican race as the choice of the conservative wing of the party. However, he spent too much time deliberating about whether to run, and when he finally joined the race, his campaign generated little momentum.

However, the most interesting story line is easily the emergence of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Whether a person supports him or not, the hysteria his campaign has generated is something that is not often seen in the political world.

I don't believe 'hysteria' is too strong a word. According to some who are covering his campaign, he is generating the type of emotion that is directed toward rock stars and not politicians.

It seems like in every election cycle there is rhetoric about the need for change, and at this point, many Democratic voters are looking at Obama as the person who can bring that change.

It's no secret that people are fed up with what is coming out of Washington. President Bush and the Democraticly-controlled Congress both have terrible approval ratings.

Obama has been able to tap into that discontent, and it is serving him well so far.

However, recent history shows that other presidential candidates have been able to successfully exploit this dissatisfaction.

For example, when the 1976 presidential race began, Jimmy Carter was nothing more than the obscure former governor of Georgia. However, he had good timing because his candidacy came when America was emerging from the stench of the Watergate scandal.

The fallout from the scandal was that President Richard Nixon resigned and several from his administration went to prison. Gerald Ford became president after Nixon left and alienated a lot of Americans when he pardoned Nixon for any crimes he might have committed.

Nobody will ever confuse Carter with a rock star, but he was able to use the discontent in the country to his advantage. He beat Ford in the '76 general election.

Unfortunately for Carter (and America), there was no happy ending during his presidency. The economy fell apart during his tenure, and terrorists raided the United States embassy in Iran and held Americans hostage for more than a year.

The general consensus about Carter when he left office was that he was a nice guy but a bad president.

Other recent Democratic presidents also had the ability to touch the hearts of voters in a deep way. For example, there can be no questioning that President John Kennedy did that.

However, I believe his presidency has been romanticized through the years because he was assassinated. After all, he won the election in 1960 with only 49.7 percent of the popular vote. He was far from a landslide choice.

The same goes for Bill Clinton. He won the 1992 election against incumbent George Bush and Ross Perot with only 43 percent of the popular vote. In '96, he was re-elected with only 49.2 percent of the vote.

As for Obama, it will be fascinating to watch how his candidacy plays out. He communicates well and has charisma. While those may seem like superficial qualities to consider when electing a president, there can be no doubting that America is superficial in many ways.

It is part of our human nature to be attracted to what is pleasing to the eye without considering the content of what we are pursing.

That is not meant to be a slam of Obama. It is meant to be a slam of voters.

Too often, voters take the easy way out when casting their vote. They don't study candidates closely and then complain when the results are not up to their satisfaction.

Regardless of who a person votes for in the general election in November (whether it is Obama, McCain, Hillary Clinton or whoever), my challenge to you all is to cast your vote based on the positions candidates take on the issues.

Don't take the easy way out.

Beware the power of gossip

Because of the growth of technology, the media now has the power to feed us information around the clock, and many of us are more than willing to gobble down what is provided.

The desire for fresh news and information is one of the primary challenges that folks in the media face. Twenty-four hours is a lot of time to fill, especially on a slow day.

Because of that, standards regarding what is reported have been lowered in recent years. This compromise is a common complaint the public has against the media, but it hasn't stopped them from tuning in to see what the latest scandal of the day is.

An obvious example of this is how news related to Hollywood celebrities is reported. For better or worse, the latest exploits of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton are a staple of most media outlets.

Most of their exploits contribute little in the form of substance to society. If they were food, the Food and Drug Administration would say they have no nutritional value whatsoever.

However, like kids who can't stop eating bowl after bowl of Frosted Flakes, many people consume this news with an appetite that appears insatiable.

While most of what is reported about these folks is classified as news, it really should not be. Really, it is nothing more than gossip.

For example, in many of these stories, information reported is attributed to anonymous sources. "Sources close to the star..." or "Sources with knowledge of the situation..." are phrases that are often used in these stories.

Of course, this means the information reported could have come from anywhere. Somebody walking a dog could have stopped to peak in a celebrity's backyard and saw something they thought needed to be reported.

Then they peddled their information to a media outlet desperate to fill their programming on that day, and suddenly, a new tabloid headline is born.

Among the worst offenders are the paparazzi. Though that term can have a pretty broad meaning, the paparazzi in this case usually are free-lancers who prowl the streets looking to take photos of celebrities and then sell them.

Of course, the photos that have the most value are ones that show celebrities in compromising positions. Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of demand for photos of stars on their way to church.

Usually, the type of photo they look for are folks who are coming out of night clubs where the celebrity may have had a little too much to drink or something of that nature.

As we all know, negativity sells in our culture, and this is no different.

Having said all that, there are times when using anonymous sources is acceptable and necessary. In recent history, the best use of anonymous sources was when "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used them when investigating corruption in President Richard Nixon's administration.

Without using reliable anonymous sources, there is no way they could have successfully pursued the stories they worked on.

Unfortunately, for every legitimate news story that requires using anonymous sources, there are dozens of frivolous ones where news outlets take the cheap and easy way out. And I believe most entertainment reporting falls into that category.

As stated earlier, I believe a lot of entertainment reporting is just an excuse to spread gossip. While most folks don't see what the big deal is, the public's willingness to accept gossip as truth is another example of how calloused our society's heart is getting.

Recently, the LiveScience web site reported on a study that demonstrated how powerful gossip can be. According to that site's story, the results of the study showed that people sometime place so much stock in gossip that they accept it as true even if their own observations suggest otherwise.

Think about it. Gossip can be so powerful that it can overrule observations that we have made with our own eyes.

Gossip hurts especially when we are on the receiving end of it. It is a powerful weapon that can shape attitudes even if there is not hard evidence to support what is being communicated.

This means we need to be very careful about what we listen to and what we say.

We can do a lot of damage without meaning to.