Beto O’Rourke went to the dentist — thought he should share
Former congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.), who also ran for Senate, broadcast his Jan. 10 visit to the dentist on Instagram.
Beto O’Rourke went to the dentist, and in the style of social media stars all over, he turned on his camera to broadcast the seemingly personal moment.
The former Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, whose unsuccessful 2018 campaign to unseat Republican Sen. Ted Cruz drew support and attention from across the country, has become known for the unscripted chats and live streams broadcast on his social media channels.
But the dentist videos, with a shot of his teeth getting worked on, represented perhaps a new level of intimacy. The story began with an image of his face
stuffed with dental tools, the rubber-gloved hands of a dental hygienist nearby.
“So,” O’Rourke said, as the technician removed the tools from his mouth, “I’m here at the dentist."
The videos were the latest example of O’Rourke’s comfort with social media — a free way to generate attention, media headlines and an aura of authenticity in the social-media-driven news era. While Donald Trump catapulted to the presidency after redefining the way politicians use Twitter — a tactic now deployed with aplomb by freshmen Rep. Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio (D-N.Y.) — O’Rourke has gone further, giving the public a window into many seemingly mundane by intimate moments of his life on live stream on Facebook.
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His ability to captivate the attention of voters — and the news media — and attract fundraisers has made him the topic of unceasing speculation about the 2020 race, despite his loss in the Senate contest.
O’Rourke had been streaming stories about the border since President Trump’s speech Tuesday. While the president painted the border as a lawless place in such crisis that it needs a wall to be built immediately, O’Rourke walked through El Paso in the dark to make a point about how calm the areas near the border are. On Wednesday, O’Rourke had posted a video that featured a video of a woman from another border outpost, McAllen, talking about how safe the city is.
On Thursday the subject of his micro-documentary was Diana, his dental hygienist. He switched the camera to face her.
“Hi, I’m Diana,” she said through her mask, with her work spectacles and headlamp on. “I was actually born in El Paso. My mom is from a small town in Mexico. … My dad is a U.S. citizen."
Diana spoke about the experience of growing up near the border and the help her mother had been offered as she worked to become a citizen.
“When she was studying to become a citizen, the neighborhood really helped her out,” Diana said. “They would record video tapes … so she could learn more English, and that way she’d be able to pass her citizenship. The entire neighborhood was there when she did, and it was wonderful.”
O’Rourke asked her what she wanted people to know about the border.
“It’s a beautiful community — we all support each other. We all love each other,” she said. “It’s not what everyone else thinks badly about. It’s actually a wonderful place to live and grow.”
O’Rourke’s live-streaming has been a part of his growing celebrity profile. He told The Washington Post in September that he had taken note of how well “Trump was able to leverage his popularity and the fact that everybody did know him, and there was this thing they liked about him.”
Other O’Rourke streams have included him eating chips and guacamole while driving, slicing flank steak, getting a haircut and skateboarding.
In September, he drew headlines after live-streaming himself doing laundry.
“Somebody asked, boxers or briefs?” O’Rourke said from a laundromat in South Texas as he held up a wet piece of clothing. "These are like boxer briefs.”
And here comes Dick Durbin again, this time voicing his opposition to Trump using the "emergency declaration" as a means of sidestepping democratic opposition to the construction of the wall along the southern border. Durbin says that if Trump is going to use emergency declarations every time he faces opposition, well Durbin says he's opposed to that.
ReplyDeleteLooks like Durbin's frequent bouts of amnesia have surfaced again, forgetting about the numerous executive orders Obama used to get his socialist agenda past non fawning members of Congress. Please, somebody run against this guy next time he comes up for re-election.