Creatures of politics : media, message, and the American presidency

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Creatures of politics : media, message, and the American presidency

Michael Lempert & Michael Silverstein

Indiana University Press, c2012

  • : cloth

Available at  / 1 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-255) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

It's a common complaint that a presidential candidate's style matters more than substance and that the issues have been eclipsed by mass-media-fueled obsession with a candidate's every slip, gaffe, and peccadillo. This book explores political communication in American presidential politics, focusing on what political insiders call "message." Message, Michael Lempert and Michael Silverstein argue, is not simply an individual's positions on the issues but the craft used to fashion the creature the public sees as the candidate. Lempert and Silverstein examine some of the revelatory moments in debates, political ads, interviews, speeches, and talk shows to explain how these political creations come to have a life of their own. From the pandering "Flip-Flopper" to the self-reliant "Maverick," the authors demonstrate how these figures are fashioned out of the verbal, gestural, sartorial, behavioral-as well as linguistic-matter that comprises political communication.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: Message is the Medium 2. Getting it Ju:::st Right 3. Addressing "The Issues" 4. Ethnoblooperology 5. Unflipping the Flop 6. The Message in Hand 7. What Goes Around. . .

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top