Just as a joke does not constitute a comedy, so too going viral on the internet does not constitute widespread attention if such attention does not spread to other media. Still, some fringe candidates who attracted significant attention among internet users but failed to spark much interest elsewhere are worth noting for the significance of their campaigns seeming to be insignificant.
In the 2008 election the performance artist Frank Moore created a website for his presidential bid. Moore was a prominent performance artist, creator of the San Francisco–based show Outrageous Beauty Review, and recipient of that city’s award for Best Performance Artist in 1992.1 His theatrical and visual art, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, was provocative enough to draw the cross-hairs of Senator Jesse Helms’s efforts to torpedo that federal agency.2
Moore also, it bears mentioning, had cerebral palsy.
Via his website Moore sought and received assistance in recruiting people to serve as state electors—individuals pledged to him in the Electoral College, a prerequisite in many states to having one’s write-in votes counted. He put forth a platform that presented proposals for foreign policy, health care, public transit, international trade linked to labor and environmental standards, drug law reform, prison reform, and greater public access to cable television. Clearly he was not clowning around.
Though he may have been performing. His running mate was a self-certified sex therapist and cable television personality, Susan Block, more popularly known as “Dr. Suzy.”
Moore’s campaign led to an in-depth interview on the website ArabianMonkey.com along with several postings about his campaign on other websites.3 In other media, however, he was rarely mentioned, and then only in listing the names of additional candidates—none of which mentioned (or likely knew of) his physical disability.4
Given that Moore’s fringe candidacy did not receive widespread attention—and that none of the attention it did receive entailed laughter—why mention him at all?
Moore’s campaign stands out as an excellent example of numerous other fringe campaigns that did not receive widespread attention but nevertheless shed light on American history. In 2008 Americans were becoming accustomed to seeing people with disabilities in the workplace, at school, and in public service. Had Moore run in the 1988 presidential election, he quite likely would have received greater attention, by virtue of his campaign’s amplifying voices that led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, two years later.
In this regard it is noteworthy that Moore did receive brief national attention in 1987. Also noteworthy is that laughter accompanied that attention. “Laughter is the freest vocal thing Frank Moore does,” a Philadelphia Daily News article told readers in an interview with Moore, who was satirically defending Playboy magazine for featuring erotic photos of a paraplegic woman. “Why should Playboy exploit normal people and not disabled people?” Moore asked. The article reported, “The laughter bubbles up within him [as he mock-complained] . . . ‘I was the first disabled sex symbol. I use my body as a tool, just like a sexy woman uses her body as a tool. She is just copying me.’”5
Lack of widespread recognition of a fringe candidacy cannot automatically be interpreted as lack of interest in an issue, just as laughter cannot automatically be interpreted as ridicule. For revealing both of those facts we have Frank Moore’s fringe candidacy to thank.