Hyperreality and kevin Rudd

Jean Baudrillard courted controversy when he (in)famously claimed that the Gulf war did not take place. Aside from translation problems, he was alluding to the destruction of reality by technology which creates the illusion that the war itself was in a sense virtual, taking place only on our television screens as if it was an elaborate Hollywood fictionalization. This allowed us to be de-sensitized to the real prosecution of horror and carnage that accompanies all war. For Baudrillard hyperreality is the capacity of the system to be more real than real, to colonize the social real with a copy that has no original.
Doesn’t this theoretical position offer us some purchase into understanding today’s political landscape where the leader is in fact virtualized, where he or she becomes more politician than politician, a hyperreal version of the political figure, completely controlled by media spin and carefully constructed and controlled media images.
In these terms Kevin Rudd does not exist. His reactions to current political events in Australia suggest that all his press releases and media door stops are, in fact virtual constructions intended to maximize voter potential rather than add to the traditional dialectical debate that accompanied political agendas. Kevin Rudd therefore does not exist. He is an illusion that appears on my television screen to tell me about the virtual reality that is the world. He tells me that Bill Henson is revolting and that climate change politics will be painful. But he really tells me nothing, because like a good drifter, he is a virtual ship in the night. Something to be played with rather than taken as the ultimate real. Let’s thank Baudrillard (and Guy Debord) for this.