True Hollywood Story: Barack Obama

With the recent Barack Obama media blackout, it's easy to forget that it wasn't that long ago that John McCain called him "the biggest celebrity in the world", and Obama was framed angelically on the cover of Rolling Stone:

Of course, this is all Obama has ever wanted. President of the Harvard Law Review, civil rights attorney, junior senator from Illinois…this is clearly the path to the flash-popping life of a political socialite.

Yes, it looked like the media was going to come all over Obama indefinitely. And then, a few weeks ago, everything changed. A new hotness from Alaska came along with her hair and her glasses and her hair, and lured the paparazzi away, reducing the former media messiah to a mere footnote:

Soon, like all celebrity has-beens, Obama was forced to get attention any way he could:

But Obama soon figured out how to build back his cred — by getting a buzz going, and being seen with the right people:

Until finally, he hit it big once again: