So: I came to a conclusion in the days leading up to the election--maybe a week before election night. Not a particularly profound conclusion, but it totally made me re-evaluate my opinion of two prominent personalities.

Mitt Romney is the politician version of Lana Del Ray.

They are both super-rich old-money automatons playing a part to appeal to as many dumb people as possible. Both get--or did get (in Romney's case)--a lot of flack for playing their parts awkwardly. For Lana Del Ray, no one knew if she was being serious or not. Her "art," to say the least, is a hackneyed regurgitation of everything that appeals to lonely 14 year-old girls with Tumblr accounts. Whether she intends to or not, her inability to really sell her hipster pop-star persona--the unoriginal themes in her lyrics, the matter-of-fact crudeness of her presentation--is what makes her such a brilliant deconstruction of everything that the hipster movement has become.

For Romney, it was pretending to be a regular "middle-class" joe and saying things that legitimate middle class people like to hear. For instance, saying he was going to crack down on tax dodgers and rich people who take advantage of offshore loopholes, when that's exactly how he made his millions--well, that an disenfranchising the working class he so adamantly pretended to rally behind.

The humor, in both cases, stems from these two people trying and failing to appear--not normal, but "natural" in the identity they (and likely a team of individuals) crafted for themselves. That is: it would be funny if everyone could see that it's funny. But, alas, Mitt Romney still got a good chunk of the popular and electoral vote and Lana Del Ray still makes money off of...whatever it is she's doing.

I feel kind of bad picking on Del Ray and Mittens, because I kind of admire what they're doing. It all goes back to that one quote, which I'm going to paraphrase because I'm too lazy to look it up: No one ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the American people. As apparent, as depressingly obvious as it seems to me, that Mittens and Del Ray aren't the people they play on TV, a substantial number of Americans really do think they are the people they claim to be. Like I said before: Mittens still got a substantial number of votes. And Del Ray is making sweet sweet bread off of her...uh...that thing she does.

It's cynical and perhaps exploitative, but I love it. Both figures are making a name for themselves--never mind the money--by saying exactly what people want to hear. They don't even have to sound sincere or look sincere in their presentation. For Mitt, all he has to do is say "America" a bunch of times, call Obama a "socialist" and say that he cares about the working class and poor. (Which, by the way, did you hear how he says "poor"--it sounds like something he had to consciously work on because, in private, he says it with a cynical sneer as he counts the millions he made off of those "dupes"). A record number of people tuned in to the debates. They saw Mitt's million-dollar Mr. Burns smile. They heard the way he referred to women as things that could be kept in a binder. They heard him say he wanted to cut funding to PBS--America's last truly objective news source who has to be objective because of the funding they get. And they STILL VOTED FOR HIM!

Same with Del Ray. Without doing any actual research, I know that she comes from money. Sure, she lived in a trailer, as she claims. But it wasn't because she couldn't afford to not live in a trailer. It was just her play-pretending to be poor, because...dude, being poor looks like so much fun. And I also know that she previously tried to make it as a "pop" star--with a totally different marketing strategy and image. And because I know these things (not being a fan of Del Ray's), I know that her fans must know these things. They know that she sometimes sings in a reaching-for-sultry-but-sounding-like-a-trans-woman-post-male-hormone-therapy Brooklyn accent, but she doesn't talk that way: and they don't care. And...to tell you the truth. I don't know that I care either. Because, whether or not she is truly doing this for her art, and whether or not she truly has no identity (or maybe just one that we don't see), she is at least projecting back to us--the normal people--who she thinks we are and what we apparently care about. Her and Mittens are basically well-polished E.T.'s holding up a mirror--and we like what we see so much we don't care who's holding the mirror. (Brilliant metaphor, I know).

So, what does this mean in terms of how we accept and define identity as a culture? I don't know. I don't think I have the mind to understand it. In the post-times-infinity-modern era, irony is no longer ironic and everyone is who they aren't, so it's hard to get a good reading on anyone.It's enough to make anyone feel autistic. Granted, politicians are notorious for saying what people want to hear. And part of being a performer is "performing." But now I think it's become acceptable to be who you're not and let who you pretend to be define you and not worry about playing the part convincingly.