Jesse Ventura and the Brave New World of Politainer Politics

Ann Conley and David Schultz
Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 23 no3  Fall 2000, pp.49-59

"We shocked the world."

So stated former pro wrestler, action film movie actor, and AM radio talk show host Jesse Ventura in November, 1998, as the election results revealed that he had been elected governor of Minnesota (Schultz, "Kenny Meets" xi).

The example of celebrity-turned-politician Jesse Ventura is but one clear indication of how the media, politics, and popular culture are becoming increasingly intertwined in our lives, and in the lives of politicians. Here, an individual named James Janos rose to fame as a popular, cult-like, outlandish personality in the televised world of wrestling with the assumed persona Jesse Ventura. From there, he appeared in several films popular with teenagers and college students; then he moved on to be a controversial host of several AM radio talk shows in Minnesota.

As a host, he was known for his brash, hard-talking, "take no prisoners" views that often criticized the political establishment. Jesse carried that persona over into his surprise run for governor, using it as a way to distinguish himself from the political establishment and to demonstrate that, if elected, he would be a different kind of governor. And elected he was. Using his media image in televised debates, and even in commercials that featured  "Jesse Ventura action figures," Jesse Ventura did shock the world. Since his election he has become an international celebrity, merging his role as governor with that of professional wrestler into a unique figure in American politics.

Since taking office, Ventura has continued to capitalize on his fame, selling his action figures and other merchandise bearing his name and returning to the wrestling ring to referee a 1999 World Wrestling Federation "Summer Slam" event. The media popular culture icon's personality and his role as governor have become indistinguishable.

What Jesse Ventura has taught us all, besides the level of his marketing genius, is the incredible potential to reach the public (read: voters) through entertainment venues. Jesse's power and value as a politician come not just from his use of a particular venue. Because Jesse is a politician who is also an entertainer, he has become what other politicians, thus far, will never be-a politainer. This article explains what it means to be a politainer, why the time is right for the politainer in our society, and what the implications of politainment are.

Emergence of the Politainer
Jesse Ventura emerged from a long line of predecessors who are celebrities (actors, newscasters, and athletes) turned politicians: Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Jack Kemp, Bill Bradley, and Fred Grandy (Love Boat's "Gopher"), to name just a few. While following in the footsteps of such notable politicians who have traded in their celebrity for political power, Jesse is forging his own distinct political path, one that others are sure to follow. He takes the trend of entertainer turned politician one step further because he is more than just a celebrity turned politician; he is simultaneously an entertainer and a politician; he is, in other words, a politainer. Jesse's path has been marked by many firsts for an American politician: action figures modeled after his television persona; a not for-profit company ("Ventura for Minnesota, Inc.") that sells official, licensed Jesse Ventura paraphernalia, along with a trademarked name; a tell-all autobiography published in his first few months as Governor of Minnesota; a second book published (and aggressively promoted and publicized) just over a year later; an appearance on the soap opera The Young and the Restless; an appearance as the referee in a World Wrestling Federation match; and a weekly Minnesota radio show. His meteoric rise into the statewide, and now the national, political scene has been incredibly instructive for those who follow and study politics.

It is from Jesse's colorful activities that we can deduce the characteristics of a politainer. A politainer is simultaneously an entertainer and a politician; his persona is a fiction; his persona is a commodity; and he uses multi-media venues (many of which are entertainment outlets) and sophisticated mass-marketing techniques to distribute "message," and/or to market himself as a politician and as an entertainer. Simultaneously an Entertainer and a Politician a politainer has a dual career: he uses his entertainment career to benefit his political career, and he uses his political career to benefit his entertainment career. Jesse Ventura's autobiography, I Ain 't Got Time to Bleed, his appearances on the late night shows (Jay Leno and David Letterman), a controversial interview in Playboy, and the sale of Jesse Ventura action figures might not have occurred had he never run for governor. Likewise, it would have been impossible for Jesse to become governor without the celebrity status that accompanied his role as Jesse Ventura, the wrestler. He capitalized on his entertainer status, ran for governor as a publicity stunt, and, much to his and everyone's surprise, was elected.

Entertainment Persona Is a Fiction, Yet We Elect the Persona Rather Than the Person
Minnesota's current governor was born James Janos, not Jesse Ventura; yet Minnesotans elected Jesse Ventura Tm , a man with a trademarked name fashioned after a coastal California city and a persona fashioned as an over-the-top wrestler. Ventura the wrestler/governor beats up "special interest man"; he sells officially-licensed bumper stickers that say "My governor can beat up your governor"'; and he refereed a World Wrestling Federation wrestling match. For Jesse Ventura the wrestler/ governor, politics has become the crucible in which he continues to forge his persona as the tough-talking renegade wrestler. Where James Janos ends and Jesse Ventura begins, or where the entertainer or governor begins and ends, is not clear, but there is no doubt that the Jesse Ventura persona is a fiction - a fiction that he sold to the public and upon which he has built his political base. The public has always made a distinction between the public and private sides of politicians' personalities and lives. For a politainer, the public/private tension is far less relevant than the tension between fiction and non-fiction.

Indeed, the public allows a politainer to get away with behavior that falls within expected parameters of that particular politainer's entertainment persona. Since Jesse has always been over-the-top, people allow and even expect him to be consistent with that persona, even if his behavior is very different from what we might expect from an ordinary politician. He can be blunt, use coarse and vulgar language, and refer to his critics as "gutless cowards," and the public views each instance as simply another example of the Governor telling it like it is. Ventura is examined not through the lens normally used to evaluate elected officials, but instead through the magnifying glass normally used on movie stars and celebrities. Such a standard is less critical and introspective, and tolerant of the latest foibles so long as they entertain and amuse us. And just like in an all-star wrestling match, the public suspends its beliefs in order to participate in the myth and fiction of Jesse "The Body" Ventura, the wrestler in the governor's office. He is the Postmodern version of the Horatio Alger story: anyone can grow up and become famous, and the television viewer vicariously participates in the story. In its desire to be entertained, the public is willing to leave its critical faculties at the door and accept behavior from the politainer that it would not accept from another elected official.

Entertainment Persona Is a Commodity
The last two to three decades of the twentieth century are distinguishable from any others in their increasingly widespread and rampant consumerism. It is in this context that our culture (with the help of marketers and our mass media) has broken new ground in its ability to commodify almost anything. While the political world has never been immune to the influence of the marketplace, one can argue that the politainer becomes a commodity like Coke or Snicker's bars. Jesse's use of a trademarked name, his enforcement of his rights, his precluding others from capitalizing on his fame, and all the accompanying paraphernalia reinforce this fact (Caple). In fact, in an August, 1999 news conference, he refused to rule out any future product endorsements (Ragsdale Al).

Use of Multi-media Venues and Marketing Techniques to Distribute "Message" and/or to Market Himself as a Politician and as an Entertainer
Politicians throughout U.S. history have made use of the media in their campaigns and during their terms of office. Political campaigns have continually adapted to the media and marketing practices of their times. In his book, Adcult USA, James Twitchell cites the "defining event of political maneuvering" in advertising as the 1952 election campaign of Dwight Eisenhower. A man named Rossier Reeves master-minded a highly successful campaign called "Eisenhower Answers America," in which Eisenhower answered on television a series of questions generated by Reeves but asked on camera by average citizens. Decades later, "Reagan did exactly what Rossier Reeves was attempting to do for Eisenhower. He traded intellectual content for emotional appeal" (Twitchell 121-22).

John F. Kennedy, too, innovatively used television. Common wisdom has it that it was Kennedy's appearance on the first televised presidential debate with Nixon that helped him win the election. Kennedy's superb television presence contrasted so greatly with Richard Nixon's lack of presence that some say it cost Nixon the election. Bill Clinton, too, pushed his use of the media farther than any previous president when he went on MTV, and when he played the saxophone on Arsenio Hall's TV show. He and his wife Hillary have periodically used morning and prime time interview shows (e.g., the Barbara Walters Specials and The Today Show) to get particular messages out.

Finally, during the 2000 presidential race, Jay Leno and David Letterman hosted candidates John McCain, George W. Bush, and Al Gore. David Letterman even employed a long-running stunt, Campaign 2000, in a successful effort to hype ratings by enticing New York Senate candidate Hillary Clinton to appear on his show. For Letterman the purpose was clear: better ratings. But for the candidates, the free exposure was invaluable, and the result was a faint effort at emulating Ventura's success in bridging the politics and entertainment gap. In fact, Ms. Clinton, who used "Hillary!" as her slogan (reminiscent of other first-name-only celebrities such as Madonna and Cher), seemed poised to make a bid for public office using her first name much like a brand name for a product. "Buy Hillary! New and improved!" Overall, the trend toward celebrity news (Hess 28) dovetails with the emergence of celebrity politicians.

Clearly there is historical precedent for politicians' use of the media. What is different about a politainer's use of the media is the degree to which it is done. What the politainer represents is the complete saturation of politics by media-and marketing.

Politainer's Postmodern Roots
The politainer is a creature of Postmodern culture. Postmodern society is characterized by:
    1) the increasing heterogeneity or diversity of the public;
    2) relativism (a core challenge to our cohesion as a culture in the Postmodem world is the relativism of values in the absence of shared foundational assumptions);
    3) the blurring of the line between public and private life (improvements in technology, advancements in information processing, and flexible job structures allow us to do work anywhere and anytime, which leads to the blending of our work and private lives);
4) a multiplicity of roles (a denizen of the Postmodern world can be overwhelmed by the number of competing roles that she fulfills at any given moment; even more difficult is the task of trying to prioritize these multiple roles [Cooper 36-40]); and
5) consumerism and the commodification of knowledge.

In the United States, we are chronically inundated with what James Twitchell calls "commercial speech" (16), the language of advertising. Behind that language is the powerful, and frequently unchallenged, assumption that money will buy happiness, and that by consuming enough of the right products, we will eventually achieve personal satisfaction. Additionally, Jean-Francois Lyotard's criticism of Modernity implies that we must now recognize the new information society of the computer and the changing role of knowledge and knowing in the Postmodern world (3-6). Knowledge is not a ground, but a commodity for exchange and power. It is transmutable and its commodification reveals its nonpermanent nature. Lyotard thus proposes that this change in knowledge undermines Modernity and its belief in a fixed epistemological center. Knowledge is a commodity no different from any other, and it can be exchanged or changed on the market for any other thing. Knowledge has been reified, implying that it can be manipulated to suit the needs of the market . . . or the electorate. Postmodernism challenges the traditional foundational basis of knowledge characteristic of Modernity, seeing in its place a more subject-orientated theory of truth that contests the clear boundaries demarcated by a rational-scientific conception of the world.

According to Richard Rorty, a sense of commonness or agreement on what truth and knowledge are lies at the heart of the epistemological foundationalism of Modernity. Rorty believes that this foundationalism is either false or illusionary, since we do not really have access to some Archimedean epistemological point - because such a point does not exist (316). Kantian epistemological categories are not universal, but historical, and they are the product of individual cultures and psychologies. Knowledge is not universal but particular, more like perspectives or ideologies than anything else.

Rorty's point is that the confrontational (or subject/ object) model of knowledge is an inadequate model of cognition. Rorty also denies that epistemology is an adequate ground for politics. In rejecting the notion that a fixed reality exists out there (or, for Kant, in the objective categories of the mind), Rorty rejects the belief in a fixed terra firma upon which one can build a permanent base of knowledge. This rejection leads to a denial of an epistemological center for politics. There is no one political truth or authority for political propositions, but many. One cannot assert that any natural laws validate universal truths of politics or prove that a political doctrine is the only correct one. Instead, there are many ways to view political questions, and all of us have the right to adjudicate them.

Rorty thus dismisses as failed the confrontation theory of knowledge. With that rejection, the epistemological ground of Modernity is gone and the entire project of Modernity is moribund. Rorty argues that we should instead view knowledge as conversational (163, 389-93) and dispense with the belief in a cognitive center. We should look to knowing as being plural and diverse (316). What we know, or what knowledge is (if we can even continue to use that term), is determined in some conventional conversational mode of unity being produced out of the many localized understandings or meanings found in the diversity of social practices (178, 361). There is no social or political center of truth. Claims to truth, or verifications of truth propositions, reside not in appeals of correspondence to some object, or in appeal to some political authority. Truth resides in how we can justify or persuade others to accept our beliefs (141).

Similarly, Paul Feyerabend also attacks the totalizing force of science as a paradigm for politics in Modernity (106-07). Modern science, as the paradigm for modern politics, has thus supported an elitist notion of politics that claims there are experts in scientific and political matters. This means that there are correct political truths and technical experts, who, when employing the correct tools, can find these truths and scientifically run the state and the polity. Scientific rationality and politics discourages the role of opinion in politics in the same way Plato discouraged doxa. Only a few really know, and are entitled to participate. Modern scientific politics, then, is antidemocratic and non-participatory, and enjoys its privileged status through its protection by the state. For Feyerabend, science has become the new state religion.

In medieval times, Christianity was the legitimizing force of monarchial power. Now, it is science justifying the modern state. While Christianity supported kings, kings supported Christianity. Similarly, science supports, and is supported by, the modern state. Feyerabend thus divorces science from politics. This presents Postmodern culture with a choice - either a foundationless politics or a politics searching for a new ground-that is filled by linking politics to entertainment. Postmodern life is marked by shifting and uncertain identities, assumptions, and values. At the same time, Postmnodern culture is saturated by the influence of commerce and consumerism. Despite our great diversity in the United States, we are tied together by our shared identity as marketplace consumers. It is the relative strength of our shared marketplace values and the relative weakness of other potentially competing value systems that makes Postmodern society particularly vulnerable to the influence of consumerism. Our shared materialism fills a cultural need for commonality. The common experience of shopping at Wal-Mart, eating at McDonald's, or watching television serves more to tie people together than anything else. The equality of Postmodern life is the shared experience of being consumers.

Postmodernism is the backdrop against which a number of interrelated trends play out: the deepening of the relationship between entertainment and advertising, the convergence of entertainment and the news media, and the convergence of politics and entertainment- all of which create the crucible in which a politainer is created.

Entertainment is obviously a common thread running throughout the trends mentioned above. A key ingredient of Postmodern culture is that people have a fundamental need to be entertained-to engage in the suspension of beliefs, the escapism, the imaginative process, the archetypal struggles (e.g., good vs. evil), and the emotional stimulation that are part of being entertained. It is from this need that the "entertainment imperative" arises in the advertising, news, and political arenas (McAllister 43).

The relationship between entertainment and advertising has been provocatively analyzed by James Twitchell, who coined the term "Adcult" as a way of capturing the degree that advertising has become the central institution in American society. In his thumb-nail sketch of the advertising industry, he makes the link between advertising and entertainment: "The business of advertising is essentially the business of trafficking in audiences. After an audience has been gathered, its attention is rented to an agent who inserts a message from a sponsor. The audience pays attention because it is traded something in return, namely, entertainment" (5).

Twitchell highlights six characteristics of Adcult that demonstrate its cultural influence and importance.
According to Twitchell, Adcult is:
* Ubiquitous. Advertising is everywhere.
* Anonymous. It is extremely difficult to determine authorship in advertising.
* Symbiotic. "Adcult shares the energy of other social organisms. The something with which it lives is on the surface entertainment and below the surface deep concerns of the specific culture." Advertisement merges with other cultural trends, like music. By viewing MTV videos, for example, one sees "how the colonizing power of commercial speech can quickly consume discrete forms and make them one."
* Syncretic. "Adcult layers itself on top of other cultures." It builds on what has come before, like the Burger King commercial that has two diapered babies chatting as in Look Who's Talking. Twitchell likens this self-referential aspect of Adcult to religious ceremonies.
* Profane. Advertising must excite and shock to get the consumers' attention.
* Magical. Twitchell contends that he is "hardly the first to recognize that advertising is the gospel of redemption in the fallen world of capitalism, that advertising has become the vulgate of the secular belief in the redemption of commerce. In a most profound sense advertising and religion are part of the same meaning-making process: they occur at the margin of human concern about the world around us, and each attempts to breach the gap between us and objects by providing a systemic understanding. Whereas the Great Chain of Being organized the world of our ancestors, the marketplace of objects does it for us. They both promise redemption: one through faith, the other through purchase. But how are order and salvation affected? By magical thinking, pure and simple." (16-30)

The concept of magic needs more exploration because, while it is the most surprising of the characteristics described above, it is also the most profound. We are so immersed in advertising that it is easy to miss the degree to which it promises us magical transformations, both big and small, from our current state of being. Through advertising we might come to believe that we can stop the aging process with the right skin cream or hair coloring; or we might become convinced that by purchasing the right make-up or beer, we could be more attractive to the opposite sex.

On one level, this kind of magical transformation is entertaining. On another, this type of advertisement goes far beyond entertainment, speaking to some of our deepest hopes (e.g., defeating loneliness) and fears (e.g., rejection or death). Twitchell contends that it is the conversation that advertising carries on with these deeper issues in our lives that puts it on a par with religion.

Twitchell goes on to draw parallels between the ancient gods (Zeus, Hera, Jupiter, etc.) and the commercial "gods" of today: The Jolly Green Giant, the Michelin Man, and Aunt Jemima, among others. The difference between modern and ancient gods is that modern gods "now reside in manufactured products and that, although earlier gods were invoked by fasting, prayer, rituals, and penance, the promise of purchase calls forth their modern ilk" (30). Through magic, disposable goods become "long-lasting charms." Through magic, a pitcher of Kool-Aid smiles and Dow Cleanser develops scrubbing bubbles that talk (30). Later, this article will return to the religious significance of advertising and will address how this point is relevant to the role of the politainer. Matthew McAllister speaks more specifically about the tactics of what he calls "new advertising," which include cross-promotion, sponsorship, and place-based advertising. These three tactics have a particular salience when it comes to understanding the milieu from which a politainer emerges.

The first tactic, cross-promotion, is an increasingly- used practice in which companies pool their economic and symbolic resources to create joint advertising. McAllister believes that "cross-promotion increases the symbolic power of one product by using it as a referent system for another product" (250). This practice is further enhanced when database marketing is used to help the marketer precisely deduce what referent systems a consumer does or doesn't like. Jesse Ventura's press conference regarding his foray back into the wrestling ring as a referee for a World Wrestling Federation (WWF) match could be viewed as cross-promotion - Jesse and the WWF received mutual benefit from Ventura's appearance. Jesse's symbolic power enhanced the WWF's and the WWF's symbolic power enhanced Jesse's (in the eyes of some, at least). Similarly, the sale of Jesse dolls by Ventura's political campaign reinforced the similar sale of the dolls by his nonprofit corporation Ventura for Minnesota, Inc.

A second tactic is sponsorship, a practice that McAllister defined as "an act of corporate giving to some activity-sometimes for-profit, sometimes not - in an attempt to capitalize on the philanthropic ethos of patronage as well as the promotional functions of advertising" (178). This tactic is not new, but it is provocative when viewed in the context of politics. In the next section of this article, we will discuss the ethical implications of a politainer with corporate sponsorship.

A third tactic is place-based advertising, which is a form of advertising that places advertising at the location or destination in which a particular audience is found. Advertising along the walls of an ice arena during a hockey game is one example. As McAllister states, "[p]lace-based advertising is not simply an ad-supported medium in a social place; it is also the use of the place (the school, the doctor' office) as a way to increase the credibility of the advertising message" (250).

All of these - cross-promotion, sponsorship, and place-based advertising - are practices that could be used by a politainer, and all create specific ethical concerns for politainers and the public. These will be discussed in the next section of this essay. The world of advertising has had an enormous impact on the institutions surrounding it. The news media/journalism is one of the institutions that have fallen under the spell of the advertising industry's twin values of entertainment and profit. The result is infotainment, the merging of entertainment and journalism. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel lament the demise of journalistic integrity at the altar of profit and entertainment. They believe that we are living in an era of "post-O.J. media" in which "the cultures of entertainment, infotainment, argument, analysis, tabloid, and mainstream press not only work side by side but intermingle and merge" (4). Put another way, ours is a "Mixed Media Culture" in which the "classic function of journalism to sort out a true and reliable account of the day's events is being undermined" (5). Kovach and Rosenstiel conclude that news programming is driven by, among many other things, the twenty-four hour news cycle, a fascination with a polarized story, and a desire to find "the 'big story' that will temporarily reassemble the now-fragmented [read: Postmodern] mass audience" (5). Ironically, the Mixed Media Culture weakens the press's ability to "serve as a cohesive cultural force, and weakens the public's tether to a true account of the news" (4-5). Under corporate control, news has simply become another form of entertainment (Schultz, "Cultural" 19-21).

News producers unfortunately are unable to afford, or keep up with, the information demands of round-the-clock news coverage. According to Kovach and Rosenstiel, channels do not adequately invest in reporting infrastructure. Short-staffed and in need of programming that will capture audiences' attention, news producers have been pushed into the "journalism of assertion" (8). The journalism of assertion has the feel of a talk show; it is populated with pundits who do not gather the news as much as they comment and speculate on it; and it entertains by engaging in polarized argumentation (1-9). News producers are falling sway to the same "entertainment imperative" that mobilizes the advertising industry.

Infotainment emerges from a milieu defined by consumerism and mass marketing. Taking its cue from the advertising industry, the news industry is becoming the infotainment industry, migrating ever closer toward the world of the entertaining, the unsubstantiated, the titillating, and the fictional. Aping a television commercial that opened with the line "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on television," infotainment takes as its slogan, "I'm not a real politician, but I play one on television."

Thus we have Jesse Ventura, who embodies all of the above in a parallel arc in politics. What we observe in Jesse is the convergence of entertainment and politics to meet the demands of a populace that is cynical about most politicians, that wants to be entertained, and that is willing to suspend their beliefs to do so.

The Implications of Politainment
As politics merges with entertainment, entertainment becomes a doorway through which politics (and, by extension, governance) immerses itself in the vocabulary and behavior of mass marketing. What are the ethical implications of this trend for politicians and for democracy?

In light of the trends toward Adcult and infotainment, there are several emerging ethical concerns for the politainer, for his audience (the public), and for the institution of democracy.

For the politainer, the previous discussion about Adcult begs the question of whether a politainer is more vulnerable to individual corruption and conflicts of interest. Dennis Thompson defines individual corruption as private gain from public office (29). This is an ongoing concern for any politician, but a politainer has even more opportunity for conflicts of interest because she has a dual career in both the political and the entertainment fields. How can the public (or the politainer) determine which hat she is wearing? When is she acting in the interest of her entertainment career, and when is she acting on behalf of her political career? When might either or both careers conflict with her duty to act in the best interest of the people she was elected to represent? When it comes to having a multiplicity of roles, the politainer is surely a Postmodern phenomenon!

Furthermore, the politainer's entertainment career, with its immersion in Adcult and mass media, makes the politainer particularly susceptible to conflicts of interest. As described earlier, the advertising industry employs the tactics of cross-promotion, sponsorship, and place-based advertising. If we apply these advertising tactics to a politainer like Jesse Ventura™ -who is, for all practical purposes, a marketable commodity - then it is logical to assume that he influences and is influenced by the advertising process. Indeed, the politainer in this situation is vulnerable to undue influence in the advertising process.

If, for example, Jesse Ventura were the recipient of corporate sponsorship from a nuclear power company or an entertainment event in which he was participating or that he was hosting, would Jesse be more inclined to sign a piece of legislation that would permit it to expand its storage of nuclear waste? Jesse Ventura says that he is not beholden to special interests- but what kind of influence would a lucrative sponsorship deal have on his decision-making? This same line of thinking would hold true for other advertising deals like endorsements and cross-promotion. Jesse Ventura™ cannot separate his interests, those of his sponsor, and those of the public, because he and his governorship are simply products of the corporate infotainment culture, lacking distinct identities. Louis XIV once remarked, "L'état c'est moi," demonstrating an incapacity to distinguish himself from France. Perhaps Jesse Ventura ™ ', who exclaimed in a Playboy interview that it was "good to be the king" (Sweeney, "Governor"), should have as his slogan either "L'marchandise c'est moi" or "L'idole c'est moi." In the case of Jesse Ventura, as with all politainers, a dynamic that complicates this issue is his apparently deep philosophical grounding in what Terry Cooper identifies as the "spirit of western individualism" (114). Cooper contends that Americans place a high value on respecting an individual's right to protect his self-interest.

Small (554), in his survey of the problem of conflict of interest in American government, has produced findings that support the conclusion that this tendency has been on the increase in modern society. He writes, "Increasingly, then, in the late Twentieth Century it becomes more and more difficult to separate the simplistic, completely personal interest from the public interest. Because these interests are overlapping and no longer separable, older norms of right and wrong, desirable or undesirable are inadequate" (554). He concludes that it is "part of the human condition" to seek money and power from public sources for the sake of private gain. (Cooper 116)

This trend does not bode well for those who believe elected office is a form of public service. Jesse Ventura™ justifies his pursuit of private gain by claiming that he is doing it in his off hours, and that if one bans outside gain, then only rich professional politicians can run for office. In short, the politainer sets a standard of conduct clearly lower than we set for traditional politicians and government officials, and the public-rather, we consumers-seem to accept this behavior much in the same way that we accept other celebrities pursuing commercial ventures. In fact, since first being elected governor, Ventura has been subject to numerous criticisms of his behavior as violating generally-applicable codes of ethics (Sweeney, "Top Ethics").

Some suggest that using government or the public sphere for private purposes can be viewed as one way in which our "commons" are being exploited. "Conflict of interest, therefore, is an insidiously difficult problem[. . .]. Citizens in public administrative positions have special access to the governmental commons that most ordinary citizens do not. This access presents unusual opportunities and, therefore, temptations to exploit governmental resources for personal gain" (Cooper 117). The emergence of the politainer, as embodied by Jesse Ventura, is a signal that this individualistic ideology is indeed winning out over a concern for the common good. Jesse's own mantra of "personal responsibility" echoes this very trend.

Another ethical question that arises in this context of mass marketing and politics relates to whether a politainer devalues the public office he holds by selling himself as a commodity. In his critique of new advertising, Matthew McAllister points out that advertising practices "devalue original institutions" (250). For example, when a school participates in place-based advertising, it is "no longer a place where advertising does not influence," and therefore it is a little less special. When Jesse Ventura™, the Governor of Minnesota, becomes a de facto advertisement for the World Wrestling Federation through cross-promotion, he not only loses some of his authority as Minnesota's highest official in state office, but he also breaks down a wall that has traditionally kept commercialism out of the role of a serving public official. Perhaps this is not a terribly compelling argument in an era where a large segment of the population already has little regard for public office and believes that all politicians are corrupt. It is, however, noteworthy that Ventura the politainer has made an unprecedented move by allowing the office of governor to be commercialized.

Unfortunately, there are no clear answers to concerns about conflicts of interest and undue influence. There is not a great deal of political will to legislate restrictions on the actions of politainers. The public seems indifferent so long as the politainer entertains, and other legislators, either fearful of public wrath or hopeful that they too can profit from the bounty, steer away from acting. Indeed, public vigilance may be the most important remedy for potential conflicts of interest on the part of the politainer.

Ironically, even though a politainer is more susceptible to conflicts of interest, she is less likely to be scrutinized for it by the public. As the first section of this article pointed out, the public has different expectations for a politainer's behavior than it does for the behavior of an ordinary politician. We allow greater flexibility in how a politainer behaves, which might mean that we are more accepting of her conflicts of interest. Additionally, the relationship between the politainer and the public is one of audience to entertainer. This means that the audience's (the public's) critical faculties have been suspended - that, again, creates a situation in which the politainer is subject to less oversight by the public. As with a movie star or other celebrity,.foibles and personal failings are part of the entertainment and attraction. Finally, Ventura often claims he is "just kidding" when he makes remarks which would damage other politicians, and the public seems to accept this as an apology. Politainment raises ethical concerns for the public as well. These concerns could be viewed as questions of access. The politainer presents both opportunities and challenges to public participation in the democratic process.

What is clear from Jesse Ventura's campaign is the degree to which he mobilized previously unmobilized voters. Because of significant media access, and through the use of sophisticated marketing strategies, politainers like Jesse Ventura now have unprecedented access to multiple markets-i.e., markets that vary by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. That is good news for the "23 million American adults [who] are functionally illiterate and therefore are almost entirely beyond the reach of print media" (Graber 203). Mass media marketing through entertainment venues present incredible possibilities for reaching out to alienated or disenfranchised groups.

One might argue that, because of whom he mobilized, Jesse Ventura's victory is something of a Jacksonian "common man" revolution. One essayist in Harper's Magazine described the following scene at the Ventura victory party on election night: The betting windows are closed but the Ascot Lounge to the right of the escalators is open, and Ventura's supporters wait three deep for a chance to take full advantage. I try to move past them for a closer look but get cut off by a train of manly men who are using their 16-ounce Leinenkugel's as wedges against the crowd. All four of them are wearing army jackets, camouflage pants, and hunting boots. The only thing missing, so I hope, are the guns.

I drop into their slipstream and ride it into the party, a fat, sweaty weisswurst of baseball hats, Twins sweatshirts, and high-school letter jackets in a makeshift staging area surrounded by television crews, whose lights fence in the dense crowd like a cattle pen. Thick of neck and stout of heart, Ventura's supporters are bleaching under the hot lights, but none of them seem to care. Next to me on the fringe, a ratty Vikings parka encases a man in his thirties. A thin layer of foam coats his mustache, and his brow is knit in drunken concentration as he tries to decide between the whiskey in his left hand and the beer in his right. All white and all worked up, the crowd near the stage builds up a stadium chant of "Packers suck! Packers suck!" which inexplicably segues into "Bikers suck! Bikers suck!" I look around and see one such biker walking out of the Ascot Lounge carrying a big beer and a paper plate with a pyramid of cocktail franks. Flipping his long black hair, he angrily surveys the pit. For a moment I think he's going to throw down his snack and put up his fists, but he only smiles and struts into the room, holding his beer high above his head like a torch. (Cass 65)

To what degree we might have heard the elite utter parallel sentiments about Andrew Jackson's supporters in the 1800s? However, despite the classist overtones in this passage, it is clear that Jesse Ventura's candidacy excited and mobilized an unusual group of voters. If it is true that Jesse is reaching disenfranchised voters, are we not one step closer to achieving a goal of full citizen participation in government? Perhaps yes, but is this an informed citizenry coming together to articulate the public good, or is merely another form of Nielsen rating or consumer choice of a brand name product? Or is it simply swapping  votes for entertainment? Are elections simply People's Choice Awards? And do we have real political debate and discourse, or a brave new form of Huxleyian hypnopaedia that lulls us into McWorld (Barber 1-3)?

In addition, human communication researchers have discovered that "individuals who consume a lot of media, particularly television, are more knowledgeable about politics and other social issues" (Emmers-Sommer and Allen 490). If this is true, then a politainer's use of multiple media venues might provide a greater opportunity for a broader number of people to engage in our democratic process. Along with opportunities come challenges. A politainer's increased level of access to the public certainly has a bright side. It also has a dark side.

Increased access to and engagement of the public through advertising and entertainment venues creates the potential to manipulate who gets access to political information. lt also has the potential to fictionalize the political process. Politainment is Orwellian in a doublethink or Newspeak sense: Politicians merge two arenas not previously combined-politics and entertainment - where fiction is reality, and where the message does not ask citizens to render careful political judgments, but instead asks for blind acceptance of the product being sold.

Indeed, a positive interpretation of the access argument assumes a free market of consumer choice
in media venues. Ideally, demand determines what venues are available, and as our population becomes more diverse, so does the variety of media available to meet the population's needs. But perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps the consumer does not choose the media, but, rather, the media choose the consumer. Matthew McAllister contends that advertising-based media seeks out the demographic groups that have the money to buy the advertised products. He paraphrases the thinking of C. E. Baker: "[A]udiences who are not 'demogenic' are ignored or seriously underrepresented by advertising-supported media. Those who are poor, elderly or live in rural areas have less media options designed to appeal to them than those who are rich, young and urban[. . .]. Advertising is much more likely to subsidize, with advertising revenue, media aimed at the upper-class than media aimed at the poor" (46).

In addition, McAllister says that media create and alter program content in order to gain audiences and to make these audiences more receptive to certain ads. Conversely, programming that makes audiences less receptive to certain advertising is less desirable to advertisers and therefore more difficult to maintain. Obviously, "advertising has an ideological effect upon media content. Advertising's economic presence significantly  influences the view of the world that the media present, a view embedded in and influenced by social power and social relations" (47).

Clearly, this dynamic has implications for access to information. In the past, one might have argued that even though advertisers have a great deal of control over certain media venues, at least the news media could still be relied upon to protect some level of democratic public discourse. Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel contend that "the news culture still shapes the lines of the political playing field and the context in which citizens define meaning for political events" (3). What the infotainment trend shows us, however, is the degree to which the news media have joined advertisers in turning public discourse into commercial speech. Advertising-based media, including the news media, are manufacturing and limiting the political debate.

Following the same logic, one might speculate that the politainer, with his vulnerability to advertisers and entertainment media, might engage in the same process of limiting public debate in order to please advertisers. The politainer is symbolic of how commercial speech has now permeated the political arena. All political speech is now commercial, and vice versa, challenging yet another barrier within First Amendment free speech jurisprudence that seeks to distinguish the two.

There is yet another problem with the optimistic view that the methods of a politainer might improve
the political process. The same researchers who proposed  that media can be educative also showed that there is a problem with "impressionable" individuals whose "learning and beliefs are influenced by fictional media" (Emmers-Sommer and Allen 491). For example, viewers of Oliver Stone's JFK are more likely to accept as truth his and James Garrison's view of the Kennedy assassination than that of the Warren Commission (Kelly and Elliot 191). These researchers might have made a case study of the thirty-seven per-cent of the Minnesota electorate who voted for the fictional candidate, Jesse Ventura™. They are prime examples of the impressionable individuals who feel that they "know" Jesse Ventura through his character in the wrestling ring.

If we concur with the assertions made about the deep and pervasive influence of Adcult, then it is
likely that to some degree, we are all impressionable. We are all, to varying degrees, well-conditioned congregants in the church of the marketplace in America; so much so that we are willing to believe in the magic that advertising offers us. With the convergence of politics and entertainment, and the concomitant influence of advertising on politics, one can foresee a future in which our notion of an educated electorate deliberating about candidates and public policy has been swept away. In its place is a populace that favors fictionalized candidates who not only entertain, but promise magic - such as simultaneously cutting taxes, raising military spending, and balancing the budget, all without smoke and mirrors!

One result of the merger of politics and entertainment is that the impression people now have of public officials is framed more by jokes and less by their stances on the issues. Thus, in the 2000 presidential race, George Bush was seen as an intellectual light-weight and a frat boy and Al Gore depicted as wooden. And because candidates were treated more like movie stars, politics is now thought of as entertainment, campaigning is like acting, and politicians are like actors. All this clearly leads to a loss of substance in politics and a degeneration into politainment. In an essay reviewing five pieces of anti-utopian literature from the early twentieth century, Christopher Dornan comments on the prescience of the authors in their assessment of where our society would be at the end of this century. In our market-induced predilection for the world of fantasy and fiction,  we are moving closer to this anti-utopian vision than we ever anticipated: "So as the 20th century draws to a close, its signature futurist motif is one of escaping reality into a media-maintained imaginary dimension where all fantasies are possible, all desires can be fulfilled. As the Microsoft ad put it, 'Where do you want to go today?' The very question presumes that the answer is elsewhere: somewhere more interesting than here and now" (Doman 129).

Perhaps we are destined for a dual reality in which our hoped-for future is "Adtopia," the world of magic and wish fulfillment, and the reality an anti-utopia in which commercial speech passes for public discourse and advertisers control public discourse and thereby control political decisions (Twitchell 39). Dornan asks the question, "Who could have imagined that the media would come to usurp political authority,  buffeting a political process and decision-making in the chaotic turbulence of perception?" (129)

Conclusion
Jesse Ventura™ did shock the world with his election, but the real shock is perhaps more Orwellian in
what it bodes for politics. Perhaps Jesse Ventura™ is just the first of a new wave of politainers who will come to dominate politics in the twenty-first century. He is the culmination of many forces. As The Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "America is reaching the climax of a generation-long trend: the melding of entertainment and politics into a hybrid, all-purpose celebrity culture" - where, according to Frank
Mankiewicz, a political consultant, "We're talking about seeing politics as an extension of popular culture" (Seib). Candidates for public office need not be real candidates or politicians; instead, it is enough, as with Warren Beatty, to have played one in a movie (Bulworth). Or, reality can mirror fiction, which mirrors reality, as in the movie Wag the Dog, which told the tale of a United States president starting a war to distract the public away from a sex scandal in which he was entwined. In 1998, as impeachment was bearing down on President Clinton because of allegations that he lied about an affair he had with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, he announced that he would begin bombing Iraq. Almost immediately, the public and the press stated this was simply "wagging the dog," using this phrase to describe what they assumed to be the real motives Clinton had in this military action.

Is the future of politics in the twenty-first century really so bleak? Perhaps not. But we can be sure that
there will be many more politainers to come. Future candidates for office may not come from state houses and the halls of Congress, but from television shows such as The West Wing, movie houses, and sports arenas. The power of Adcult and the shaping influence of infotainment almost require it. Politics, like the news, will become yet another entertainment medium through which products are sold-including the politicians/ politainers themselves. We are sure to see more Bob Doles selling Viagra, Mario Cuomos selling Doritos, and Jesse Venturas™ selling World Wrestling Federations, with little regard for whether the politician is currently in office. And, as for the public, as long as we are entertained-we simply will not mind.

Works Cited