O'Donnell Does Terrifying Impersonation Of A Legitimate Candidate

“The woman Democrats love to hate” was how Sean Hannity introduced Christine O’Donnell last night. Correction: Democrats love her, as long she stays 15 points behind. So how’d it go? Well, she’s a PR person, and she knows that much.

This morning, media types are complaining that the O’Donnell interview was boring. There was, as Mediate noted, only one or two entertaining intervals:

Of course, Bill Maher came up. Hannity noted O’Donnell “did his show a lot,” to which she replied, “Unfortunately.” She also termed her dabbling in witchcraft “rebellion”…and in one of the more (and relatively rare) interesting moments of the interview, said, “Who didn’t do some questionable things in high school?”

Except that when it comes to O’Donnell, the less the national media finds her “interesting” — in this case, controversial, ridiculous, clickbait or good for ratings — the better it is for her legitimacy as a candidate. She attributed her abrupt cancellation of Sunday shows to being devoted to Delaware and local media, saying this was her last national interview. She attributed her financial problems (which make her distinctly relatable to average Americans struggling with their mortgages) to her virtuous non-profit work, and her positions on social issues to being inspired by religion in her twenties, without saying what she believes now on condoms, homosexuality, or abstinence-only education, to name a few. She claimed that she was being labeled an “extremist” but that no one was addressing her on the issues — the new ones she’s claimed, in accordance with the times, including taxes and jobs.

Anyone just tuning in to see what all the fuss about might get the mistaken impression that this pleasant, well-spoken young woman was getting a bad rap from the big bad liberals.

It’s no accident that O’Donnell is not only a PR and marketing type, but that her candidacy came out of the sort of pseudo-knowledge conferred by TV talking head culture, in which people habitually fake it until they make it, turning morsels of cocktail party chatter into a believable impression of actual authority. As Charles P. Pierce wrote when she first won:

O’Donnell is a creature of an age in which politics have no meaning beyond performance art. She is the Creature from the Green Room, with no apparent public career beyond being available whenever some teenage booker from the cable shows needed someone to say something reliably stupid.

… She is what politics produces when you divorce politics from government. She is what you get when you sell to the country that nothing government can do will help, and that the government is an alien thing, and that politics is nothing more than the active public display of impotent grievance.

And that was almost a whole week ago — an eternity in the news cycle. She has six more weeks to continue giving a convincing impression of being an actual candidate.

O’Donnell To Hannity: The Media Is Trying To Paint Me As An Extremist [Talking Points Memo]
O’Donnell On Hannity: Not Going To Do Any More National Media [Mediaite]
Related: Can We Calm Down About Delaware’s Tea Party Already? [Esquire]