Famous for being famous?

I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about this before, but it bears repeating: The notion that Sarah Palin is “famous for being famous,” a la a Paris Hilton or Nicole Richie, is incredibly insulting. And now I see that Stephen Bainbridge thinks that Scott Brown is Palin’s male counterpart:

We live in a celebrity besotted age in which good looks and relentless PR have enabled an astonishing number of people to become famous mainly for being famous. Paris Hilton. The endless number of Kardashians and so on.

In the political world, television, blogs, and so on are creating similar phenomena. Consider Sarah Paiin. Even her most ardent admirers ought to admit that she is a person of modest accomplishments. A half-term governor of Alaska. Plucked from obscurity by the McCain campaign for reasons that remain obscure. An educational career not promising of great intellect. … Admittedly, Brown pulled something off for which he has deservedly gotten a lot of attention; namely, taking the “Kennedy seat” for the GOP. But he’s at the start of his national career. He has zero legislative accomplishments. He hasn’t really defined himself. He hasn’t earned the right to be a viable Presidential candidate.

So let me get this straight: Sarah Palin is “famous just for being famous,” not for serving as the mayor of a town and shepherding it through a transformation from a hamelt to a thriving suburb, then being elected governor to a state and taking on the entrenched powers there in an effort to put a stop to cronyism and corruption? Scott Brown is “famous for being famous,” not for serving in the Massachusetts state House and Senate before defeating the Democratic nominee in the race for the Senate seat that had been held for most of the last 100 years by a Kennedy?

I don’t dispute that neither candidate has a single real legislative accomplishment under their belt and that chatter about their being serious presidential candidates is little more than idle speculation by a bored press corps looking for a story. In that regard, they remind me of another recent presidential candidate, a candidate who had served only two-thirds of his first term as the junior senator from a mid-size state and a few years in that state’s legislature before. He didn’t have any real legislative accomplishments under his belt — how could he have, he spent almost his entire Senate career running for president — but he sure did give a pretty speech at the 2004 Democratic presidential convention. Yet you’ve never heard Barack Obama described as “famous for being famous.”

(Hm. I guess I probably should have headlined this under Liberal Condescension, Cont., shouldn’t I have?)

h/t: Andrew