VAMP: At Virginia Postrel’s new blog “Deep Glamour: At the Intersection of Imagination and Desire,” she muses:

Beyond the ordinary factors that give the Democrats an advantage this year, Barack Obama’s glamour poses a huge problem for the McCain campaign. To destroy glamour, you have to change perceptions. You can try sober realism. But that lacks emotional punch. To strike at glamour’s emotional core, horror and ridicule work better. Instead of telling the audience to ignore its desires and be rational, they replace desire with dread or derision. What was once inspirational becomes terrible or absurd.

(here)

To which a commenter acutely replies: “I don’t think horror diminishes glamor, horror is a glamor of its own. Watch some vampire films if you doubt that.”