It will cost you bazillions of dollars to run your ad, so you happily spend a few bucks to make the best ad ever, and thus often the commercials are a better show than the game itself. All that money attracts innovation, so we can expect to be wowed by new technologies and glitz. The audience will be worked over by some of the best minds in the selling industry.
Not long ago the selling industry invented a more economical alternative to the 30 or 60 second commercial. Those game time commercials were becoming prohibitively expensive. Some genius came up with notion of selling really small bits of time during the game, time in which a visual image flashes for just seconds, and only costs a few millions, and that flash done right imprints upon the precious fertile mind of the television watcher, and said watcher will remember and certainly buy that cola the next time he hits the store. Brilliant!! It’s economical, and effective, and the more fertilizer packed into the mind, the better this technique works.
I saw a similar visual flash the other day while wandering about in “social media”. It’s election time too, in case you haven’t noticed, and the clever folks who sell politicians are also trying to leave an impression upon fertile minds. So they are planting brief visual images of their product where their audience will not only be watching, but will pass it on to others for free. So when you open your Facebook page and Susie is telling you what she had for breakfast, just below you nay see a tiny photo of our president, tie off and sleeves rolled up and ready for work. He looks just like a model in GQ.
I know about rolling up sleeves. You see, I’ve always been something of a clothes horse, and looking proper is a priority with me. Ask anyone. Way back in my youth I read that the clever employer will note how you roll up your sleeves. Pay attention here, cause this can be important.
It turns out that if you roll up your long sleeves to get to work, hoping to vent all that heat you will be generating by hard effort, and keeping those precious sleeves clean for later when you will be lifting a few down at Rudy’s Pub just like in the beer commercial, you have two options. You can roll the sleeves above your elbow, or you can leave them just below.
What, you may ask, is the difference? Well, the expert I listened to suggested that the true hard worker rolled his sleeves above the elbow, and the guy who was just trying to look like he was working, the guy who was actually not gonna work for you, rolled his sleeves just below the elbow. This phony was only styling. He was a poser.
And yes…he is our president…..if you can believe the photo I saw recently on Facebook.
Now, perhaps this judgment is too harsh. Maybe our president really does wear those casual pants and that wrinkled work shirt with the sleeves rolled up when he is saving the world. I wasn’t there when the photo was taken. Maybe it only looks like it was staged to sell a product. Who knows if this really is only a clever visual image planted upon fertile minds so they won’t think as poorly of this guy as I do.
My problem is I can remember a primary race years ago when the Democrats were fielding a bunch of hopefuls trying to unseat a sitting president. I often voted for Democrats in those days, and so I watched with interest. You recall the story I once told of watching, early in the primary race, a program put on by one of the major TV networks (like the democratic candidate, these folks also were trying to unseat the sitting president, so they were trying to make these guys look good) and they were introducing the candidates one by one to folks like me who didn’t know all the politicians from the other end of the country. My TV wasn’t working well; I had no sound, so I just watched these men trying to look their best. I watched them talking without being able to hear them, which actually is a good way to watch presidential debates, but that is another story, and there was this guy from Arkansas, and as I watched his smile and his eyes and his lips moving, I came to an instantaneous and unmistakable conclusion. He was lying. This time, I was right.
And I watched another guy, this one tall and good looking and casually dressed in a red plaid flannel shirt, (like a model in GQ), leaning on a farm fence and hanging with the common man, and he looked concerned and friendly and environmental and he didn’t look at all like some phony crook in a three piece suit with a long history of privilege and family corruption behind him, and I was sold on him. And boy…was I wrong.
The real Al Gore was born wearing a three piece suit and grew up in wealth, political influence, and privilege, in exclusive downtown hotels and a mansion back home, and the closest he ever came to that down home environmentally casual red plaid flannel nice guy feet firmly on the good ground common man image he tried to convey was when he stepped in a pile of dog crap with his handmade Italian shoes while getting into the limo. The guy was pure 1%, if you get my drift. And somebody should have been occupying him.
So anyway, I was looking at this tiny flash photo of our president, staged to look like he is just an average guy you might buy a beer for in a college town hamburger joynt, and what’s not to like? And alongside the photo is this brief synopsis of his rags to riches American Dream life, and who wouldn’t conclude that the guy is REALLY working hard to help folks, if that evil bunch over there would simply get out of the way. The folks selling him will tell you he deserves four more years to try to make things right again.
Choked me up. Really, it did. Wow, what a guy!
Couldn’t help contrasting my life of privilege with his struggle. You’ve all heard the story of how his poor single mom did her best to rear him, and then the wonderful grandmother took over, and then there was college and Harvard law school and then all those socially responsible jobs helping out the poor before public demand sent the man into politics. And then, all by himself, he made president. It’s heartwarming. No wonder he has to roll up his sleeves. One more roll up his arm to above the elbow and he’ll get that right, too.
Now me, I had it easy. Two parents. They stayed married and both worked to provide for their kids. I had it made. Poor Barack…his daddy left pretty much without a word, off to try to start revolutions, preaching hate for America, and planting babies. His mommy apparently couldn’t care for the boy, so grandma took over. By all accounts Grandma was very good to him. There was that exclusive expensive prep school, but that is good for a boy. And Grandma, the wealthy bank executive could afford it. I went to Cary Grove Community High School, and it was very good for me, too. It was free, so yeah, I had it made.
Barack had to go to that expensive private university, Columbia. Good school, but boy is it expensive. I had it easy, going to a state university on scholarship. I went on to further education, while Barack headed to the jungles of Chicago, organizing the community, working to help the common man, and in the process herding hundreds into voting for the corruption and fraud that is the entrenched Illinois crime, I’m sorry, political party that runs the place. He made lots of useful friends working to line up those folks. These friends are helping him out to this day.
Barack later did well in Harvard Law School. He is a bright guy. Somehow he found a way to pay for this, one of the most expensive schools in the history of the world. Maybe his friends helped. Welcomed back to Northern Illinois, he landed jobs and handled responsibilities easily. Shows the value of good friends. I headed west to practice my profession, and Barack made more friends by being helpful himself. I made an easy living by showing up every day, buying my tract home and putting a few bucks away for retirement. Barack struggled on, but managed to acquire a small fortune and his mansion in a neighborhood of good wealthy friends.
At the urging of and with the support of his friends, Barack entered politics, and thrived there. Being the great guy he is, he rewarded his friends with power jobs and plain old power. And with this power he set out to save the world. Which brings me to the other tiny photo lower on that same Facebook page.
Nothing tugs on your heartstrings like the photos of those wet starving puppies and kittens that the fund raisers down at the Human Society of the US put up on TV. That’s guaranteed money, and they rake in millions from the kind people who see those photos. The HSUS people are little more than good business people. They take all that money from folks who see those pathetic photos and want to save animals, and they save the money, giving oh just a little to themselves to keep them in mansions too. Don’t hardly spend a dime on actual animals, but what of that?
Somebody must have been watching this success, for now you can find pictures of sick people on Facebook, and they tug on your heartstrings too, and you will stand in line to help Barack’s friends provide free health care for all of these people. They deserve it. It’s a basic human right. And we can afford it. Just give Barack’s government the money and they will make it right.
Probably, somebody will put up a tiny photo of a hungry person next, hoping for food for life, and some guy who’d like a nice house, and don’t forget the lady who’d like free clothes. These are basic human rights too. I suppose we should get the government to provide these, too. It’s worked well before, in nice countries we all remember. Barack’s friends are all for this. Seems likely he is too.
And like when he community organized folks to vote for the corrupt machine in Chitown, he’ll be luring the voters with free this and that to keep voting his own machine into power.
Sure, it’s expensive and the government can’t afford it now, but remember…all those folks from privilege out there? Barack says they have all the money. Barack wants it. And so do his friends. And in the end, this is how he will put those friends in charge of all of us.
Four more years.
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