As a lazy, dishonest person, I appreciate the value of shame. Take this blog: were it not for the literally several of you who expect a post each weekday, I would probably wake up early and excuse myself from writing almost every morning. Fortunately, I find time in the day to do that anyway, but my point is that shame is a powerful motivator—for me, at least, and I suspect for a lot of other people, too. One of the aspects of conservative orthodoxy I actually agree with is that our contemporary culture exerts dangerously low amounts of shame. I totally disagree with conservatives about where that shame should be placed; we still exert way too much shame on gay people and immigrants, for example. That’s valuable shame that could be more effectively directed elsewhere. Maybe, as Thomas Edsall suggests in the Times, we could redirect our shame at people who make obviously false and/or misleading statements to the general public. Earlier generations called such statements lies.
Tag Archives: commercial
Pelosi prepares for amazing thought experiment
Here’s one for those ready to play the Feud: between Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, whom do you think Americans dislike more? Both are future former heads of the most reviled body in the United States government. Both are perceived as dishonest hacks—Pelosi in service to an increasingly demonized Democratic establishment and Gingrich in service to, well, Gingrich. Both appeared in a global warming commercial that each frankly acknowledges was bad for Gingrich, for the strangely agreed-upon reason that people hate Nancy Pelosi. Perhaps most importantly, both know what Newt Gingrich did in 1996. Her tenure on the House ethics committee that investigated him has left Pelosi with privileged information, which she is now promising/threatening to reveal “when the time is right.” From a PR standpoint, this is like Saddam Hussein inviting everybody to watch him hit Osama Bin Laden with nerve gas.
Rick Perry releases Armageddon 2: Antichrist
Kaboom! Mitt Rombama has a psychic episode.
A few weeks ago we discussed the terrifyingly cinematic campaign commercial in which Rick Perry teaches a broken America to make jet fighters again. That was back when he was the front runner and logically impelled to demonize the President. Now that the American people have gotten to know him, Perry is trailing fellow suit-mounted jawline Mitt Romney. (Ed.: Who? Who?) The two men couldn’t be more different: one is the millionaire son of a former governor, and the other became a millionaire while he was governor. Also, one of them is basically Barack Obama. In order to make clear which, Perry has produced this 59-second biopic. Props to Micky for the link, and video after the jump.
Seeking children, McDonald’s re-deploys clown
"It's actually parked out back, if you want to get out of here."
You may not have noticed,* but the last few years of McDonald’s commercials have been conspicuously free of Ronald McDonald, the clown so brightly colored that only a child
‘s retinas are innocent enough to look at him. It turns out that L. Ron McDonald has been the object of an ongoing campaign of protest from various height/weight-appropriate killjoys, who argue that he is designed to sell unhealthy food directly to children. That is obviously true. When was the last time you saw a clown convince an adult of anything, much less what to put in his mouth? Whereas that works on kids all the time. With their McCafe marketing campaign and their new emphasis on salads, apple slices and other substances that will not immediately stop a mouse’s heart, McDonald’s has been working the adult/child divide for the last several years, so it’s only logical that they would again release Ronald McDonald into the wild. He is back; he is still simultaneously nonthreatening and extremely disturbing, and he is definitely for kids.
Verizon Thunderbolt will empower, baffle you
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXkqpul38wE&feature=player_embedded#at=12
I have watched this advertisement for the Verizon Thunderbolt several times now, and all I can say about the actual phone is that it looks hard to charge. Those of you who have seen The Daily Show or a Shia LaBeouf movie in the past three months will recognize this latest in a series of tone-deaf Verizon commercials that present the smartphone as an alien product that smashes trees and evokes submissive awe in rural people. Like that spot—in which a young man waits eagerly for his new phone to arrive and, once he actually gets it, decides to hurl it as far away as possible—this commercial manages to capture my two main fears about any new smartphone:
1) I have to charge it for eight hours every 16 hours.
2) It may provide evidential proof that I am some sort of douchebag.
I don’t think I’m alone in this.