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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Tuesday, January 06, 2004
Department of Cultural Stereotypes Atrios and Hesiod each have some thoughts on the attack ad that Club for Growth is running against Dean in Iowa. The script is rather lacking in subtlety: In the ad, a farmer says he thinks that "Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading ..." before the farmer's wife then finishes the sentence: "... Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont, where it belongs. I don't know if Hesiod meant this as a serious suggestion, but I think he hits at the truth when he suggests that the ad was intended to make Dean look good. I think it is intended to hit Dean's core audience, make them feel under attack, and encourage them to rally and support him more strongly. Club for Growth is surely aware that past attacks on Dean have improved both his fundraising and his standings in Democratic polls. At the same time, it plants in an extreme form the cultural images that the Repugs will use against Dean if, as they hope, they face him in the general election.
Hesiod also notes that Iowa, in fact, has more Starbucks locations than Vermont. But he fails to factor in that Iowa also has more people. Actually, at one outlet for every 306,500 residents, Vermont is more Starbuckized than Iowa's one per 365,400. You can find far more coffee if you head out to California, home of Hollywood in the south, Sodom in the north, and one Starbucks for every 25,600 residents. But even we can't compete with latte-loving Washington DC, headquarters of the Club for Growth, with one Starbucks per 12,400. |
