Joseph Stack, Politics and Celebrity

Celebrity is a crazy and arbitrary thing. Joseph Stack entered a realm of celebrity today when he crashed his plane into the IRS building in Austin. Before today, the public at large knew nothing about Slack. His six-page suicide note details a man who has railed against big, corrupt government and taxation for nearly 30 years. His act has spurred (as of this writing) 10 Facebook groups, many of which position him as a hero.

But Slack offers an opportunity to look at the creation of celebrity. To paraphrase Chris Rojek, transgression is a tried and true route to acquire celebrity and Joseph Stack has become an overnight notorious celebrity-- at least for the short term. What appears to be a solo act of frustration with taxation has been co-opted into a treatise on all that is wrong with the way taxes and government work in our country. And many people, myself included, believe that there is something wrong with the way our government is run, but I believe it often boils down to the idea that as Americans we are lured by the concept of politician as celebrity, not who will do the best job per se.

Television forever changed the way we elect public officials. The overarching complaint most people had with Al Gore during his run as president was that he wasn't charismatic. What does that really have to do with whether or not he would be a good, effective leader? Barack Obama is certainly smart and charismatic but the jury is still out on how his presidency will be remembered. We've never had a truly unattractive president since the dawn of the TV age and we've also never had an obese president (although some of the Clinton Big Mac years got very close). So, in effect, we vote for the most popular one, who also sometimes happens to be the one with whom we'd most like to have a beer.

In a week, we will have forgotten all about this incident (if it even takes that long) but for now, Joseph Stack has become a celebrity and the face for the Tea Party movement to signify all that is wrong with government as people, particularly small business owners, decry the injustice of being "taxed twice." And we will continue to vote for the one who is most attractive and charismatic while continuing to get the same result while expecting something different -- which coincidentally is the definition of insanity.