Where Fun Comes to Die

Hollywood gossip column Defamer reports that television viewership for Obama’s press conferences has steadily declined to the point where networks running the most recent press conference got beat in the ratings by Fox’s “Lie to Me.”

On the one hand, Obama’s combined viewership beat Fox, on the other hand, it has shown a 42 percent decrease over the past three months from its February peak of 49 million.

At this rate, Fox only needs a few months before “Lie to Me” surpasses Obama press conferences across all networks and American Idol, at nearly 24 million viewers per show, is almost already there.

Obama was criticized during the presidential election by fellow candidate John McCain for being a celebrity, specifically he was compared to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.  Unfortunately for him, only one of these comparisons seems accurate now.  Britney has enjoyed consistent popularity — she has been Yahoo!’s most popular search term for the last four consecutive years and seven times in the past 8 years.  Paris’s popularity, on the other hand, has recently “plummeted.”  Between the two, Obama’ resembles Paris more than Britney,  with  Britney recently surpassing Obama in google searches.  Is this happy news or unhappy news for the Obama camp?  On the one hand, there is less credibility to the argument that Obama is a supercelebrity.  On the other hand, who wouldn’t want to be popular?