Secret Identity of DTH Columnist

Have you ever been told something that you can in no way understand? Like for instance, "Chris, you look like an overweight John Goodman?" Or "Karen, didn't you play tennis under the name Martina Navratilova during the 1980s?" Some people think my roommate last year is one Mike Dunleavy Jr. He looks like the walking dead with a really bad hangover, plus all his sleeping made me think he has been "sharing sodas" with the lassies on the other side of the hall.

For me, since I was 8 years old, people have told me I look like one Mr. Neil Patrick Harris, television's "Doogie Howser." Frankly, I have never seen the resemblance.

During Spring Break (while you were drinking cosmopolitans on the beach in some Third World country who lives for the rest of the year thanks to your bar bill), I was in New York working on a campaign.

Whenever I got on the subway or went in to a restaurant, I was welcomed with a chorus of obnoxious nasal New Yorkers yelling, "Dooooogie!"

I would nod and try to explain that I was not him.

I never practiced medicine before I could shave (although I do write columns before knowing how to shave - insert sheepish grin of embarrassment), I never had an Italian-American late-'80s stereotype for a friend and I never played a lead role in "Rent."

Really Doogie, what were you thinkin' on that last one?

What I thought was playing along with the joke actually only created more problems. On Halloween, I dressed up in scrubs and did my hair the way Doogie did it on the show - a cunning disguise, I know.

When I could not perform an emergency heart valve replacement while waiting in line at Time Out, I had to spend the rest of the night avoiding projectiles being thrown at me.

I was picking up on something - looking like someone does not make you that person.

Here is the problem: the look of someone who had a medical degree on a television show does not make that person a genius or the savior of Western civilization (like we all knew Doogie was, especially when he typed on that supercomputer of his at night).

I personally put my talents of looking like someone else to use - as I alluded to earlier - in the world of politics.

By gosh, I am the best TV look-alike that folds signs and phones voters to ask them to vote for my guy this side of Pembroke, or maybe even New Bern!

The irony of my work on various political causes is that sometimes you win, and often you lose.

Sort of like a certain TV show about a boy doctor that got canceled - a TV show on the vanguard of present garbage like "ER," "Gideon's Crossing" or "Chicago Hope," I will have you know.

There are many parallels between floundering campaigns and looking like a former celebrity.

One obvious one is that people both think we are something we are not.

I am not Mr. Howser.

And while people think a candidate is one thing, he often is something else. It's not my fault that I am not Doogie, and it is not their fault that they take on a symbolic meaning.

Masses, don't you realize you are giving us characteristics that we never had?

Don't put all your money on us. I will not give you a physical and sign your tummy. And this politician will not deliver the world to you when you vote for him.

So why do you have us? Why have celebrity impersonator shows? Why are there unionized Elvis impersonators?

Why? Because to you, could I maybe, just maybe, really be this actor?

Why do we have a democracy and why do we still vote for people?

I think we have not yet learned our lesson. Somewhere we still hope against hope that politicians and look-alikes will be something dramatic and awe-inspiring.

We will not resort to negative ads.

We'll say what we believe.

And we'll tell stories about the high-life in politics and in Hollywood, stories that will make you feel somehow more important because you know us. Stories you can later tell people by prefacing it with, "This friend of mine is big in the TV shows, and . "

Unfortunately, we are still people.

There is nothing really different between the governor and the average man on the street. The king and the pauper are just as funny and bathe at the same odd and infrequent intervals.

The problem comes when the pauper goes after the king's head. The fan clubs disband and go home - and the politicians lose in their re-election bid - when they become who they are after trying to be someone they are not.

"To thine own self be true," said Shakespeare in a play called "Hamlet."

In addition to insanity and incest, themes that often make me rent movies and date my cousins (joke, that is a joke), the play is about a bunch of quasi-celebrities and politicians who try to over-inflate themselves - with tragic results.

Now, if only we tried every once in a while to not lead people on with who we wish we were .

William Howser - or is it Doogie McKinney - is a sophomore from Greenville, S.C. Reach him with questions, comments or concerns at wmckinne@email.unc.edu.