Being America’s new political poster boy is tough work. You have to wear disguises and fly to Vegas. Your regular workouts get disrupted. And your obsession with Ayn Rand doesn’t make you look as smart as you thought it would.
Welcome to Rep. Paul D. Ryan’s world. He’s the presumptive GOP vice presidential candidate and America’s newest political poster boy. Since Mitt Romney announced Ryan as his running mate last Saturday (in a shrewd move to keep the online media off the scent for a couple of hours – at least), online chatter has been all about the boy, who at 42, is considered relatively young to be so mean.
Hidden behind the altar boy good looks (not to mention six-pack abs) supposedly lurks a mean kid who would trip the old lady crossing the street (and pry her social security check from her hand). Online conversations about Ryan have flipped and flopped over his hair, his suits, his foreign policy experience – which sounds like just another day at the office for Madame Secretary Hillary Clinton.
What else have people been buzzing about recently?
- The London Olympics closed with a pop culture festival on ice. Spice Girls on top of taxis, George Michael back in the groove, The Who still kicking it, ice skating nuns. All the tape delay complaints were forgiven after this epic 3-hour spectacular.
- Is it just us, or do there seem to be more celebrity deaths this year than any year in the recent past we can remember?
- Justin Beiber’s Klout Score Went Down.
- Barack Obama’s went up.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
