Wednesday, April 10, 2013

ANNALS OF THE CULTURE WARS.

Brad Todd at the Daily Caller:
Washington’s pundits have been united this spring. They’ve concluded that a single shift in culture on gay marriage has marooned one of America’s political ideologies from the public majorities of tomorrow.
The pundits are right that one political philosophy is being left behind but wrong about which one. It is liberals, not conservatives, who are chained to an ideology built for yesterday’s culture. The proof of this realignment is not on cable news, but...
I have to admit, folks, at this point I was very interested to see what, besides the political events of the day, presaged this conservative ascendancy.
... but on cable television’s hippest drama, “Mad Men,” which this week kicked off its final season to great fanfare.
Blink. Blink.

I thought next he was going to say that Mad Men shows the ruinous legacy of the liberal 60s because they made Don suicidal and Betty fat; alternatively, that it shows how great life was when women and black people were oppressed. Those would have made some sense on a juvenile level at least. But... To boil it down for you, the left is old and gross because Obamacare is sooo LBJ and soaked in "the collective emotional DNA of the post-war era," which the kids don't like because it's analog.
LBJ sold that audience national retirement pensions as easily as the age’s Mad Men built national brands of soap and beer. Similarly, the rest of society’s institutions nationalized as well — the American Legion, the Moose Lodge and the Methodist Church saw their ranks explode as the parents of Baby Boomers equated quality with conformity.
Fifty years later, Budweiser now disguises its products as pseudo-craft brands and the Methodist Church is withering in plain sight. The dominant brands of this age are not purveyors of conformed consumption but enablers of individualization — Apple, Google and Facebook.
And any fool can see that if you like social media and fake microbrews, you're just naturally gonna be right wing.  Haven't you seen Twitchy? Also:
Customers at the decade’s most ubiquitous national food merchant, Starbucks, have developed an entire language to express their half-caf, soy-no-whip, double-shot individual solutions.
It's like the conspicuous consumption of the Reagan era, only much cheaper, which is good because since our economy was destroyed in 2008 fancy coffee is about all we can afford.
So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from health insurance to local electricity generation? When nearly every thriving national brand succeeds by empowering Americans to seek and achieve different results, only the Democratic Party is peddling redistribution and a system that on its best day generates only mushy mediocrity.
Todd, you will not be surprised to learn, is an ad man, and this ripomatic reminds me of those post-Berlin-Wall corporate ads in which former slaves of Sovietism stepped into the sunlight and had a Coke and a smile. Only that's a bit out of style now. It's harder to convince people you represent the future when your suit is caked with dust from the demolition job you've done on the American Dream and your pockets are stuffed with fraudulent securities. Also, if you want to own "choice" as an equity, maybe identifying yourself with the dying anti-gay cause isn't such a hot idea.

I hope next they try to bring back South Park Conservatism and put Steve Crowder in charge. I could use a laugh.

UPDATE. Slightly edited because, like all the greats, I am constantly fiddling with my own work.

UPDATE 2. In comments, Mr. Wonderful asks:
There's got to be a name for this--this confident extrusion of analysis and prediction that seems so astute until it dawns on you, and your dog, that it is objectively, visibly wrong. Is this what they mean by "post-modernist political commentary"? Where they type something like, "Bernie Sanders, whether he knows it or not, is actually a Republican, because he's a member of the Senate, which is one of our oldest and most traditional public institutions"?
PoMoPolComm might work, but being a traditionalist I prefer "bullshit."

187 comments:

  1. Thanks for taking the time to expose this inane jerk.

    I've seen so many of these type essays lately that I've come to think there's a factory somewhere churning them out.

    Outsourced undoubtedly.

    S

    It's like the conspicuous consumption of the Reagan era, only much
    cheaper, which is good because since our economy was destroyed in 2008
    fancy coffee is about all we can afford.

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  2. I think I'm starting to understand the conservative obsession with pop culture. If you read the whole thing, this article is not really about Todd's absurd thesis that the popularity of Starbucks means that young people will hate Social Security. It's about the social issues that are starting to backfire for the GOP. Todd frames the article around the shift on gay marriage, and what that might mean for the party that's made gay bashing a cornerstone issue for several cycles. He's trying to argue that it doesn't matter, because people's personal tastes tell the real story.


    That's the game right there - a variation on the old "conservatism cannot fail" saw. The cons have had a few issues that have been consistently effective for several decades, which really made them believe that they had the heart and soul of America. But those issues showing their age, and people aren't buying like they used to. Well, that can't be right - it would mean that conservatism was flawed. So we ignore those nasty polls and election outcomes and come up with another way to prove that the right is still on top. In this case, they take something that's popular, whip up some post facto reasons why it's a conservative thing (and therefore popular because it's a conservative thing), and voila! We're winning again!

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  3. The dominant brands of this age are not purveyors of conformed consumption but enablers of individualization — Apple, Google and Facebook.
    ...
    Customers at the decade’s most ubiquitous national food merchant, Starbucks, have developed an entire language to express their half-caf, soy-no-whip, double-shot individual solutions.

    I think we just discovered the absolute zero of irony: the lowest amount of self-awareness possible within a system, or in this case argument.

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  4. Spaghetti Lee1:01 AM

    So gay marriage is bad because pensions and Methodism, but it's OK because there's lots of different kinds of coffee. Forget ad men, I wouldn't be surprised if a chat bot wrote this one.

    How about: Gay marriage and Medicare aren't 'brands', you hollow-souled Patrick Bateman wannabe. They're basic political rights in a civilized country, and people are fighting for them because they're the right thing to do, not to impress some jackass marketing exec.

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  5. I've come to think there's a factory somewhere churning them out.

    Otherwise known as think tanks.

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  6. AGoodQuestion1:04 AM

    His bubbleheaded generalizing on social and commercial trends sort of reminds me of Thomas Friedman and Camille Paglia. Except they're nominal political independents. He's making it obvious that he's got a dog in the fight. Not that he's doing much to help the dog.

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  7. montag21:07 AM

    Why do I get the feeling that this guy really doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about? And, maybe, never has?

    Probably because anyone these days who starts talking about branding as if it's a mystical experience needs a boot up his ass good and hard, along with a long stretch of unemployment.

    This branding of individualism is nothing new (IIRC, the term, "lifestyle," as a means of defining a set of individual values, was created not by "the culture," but by Stanford Research Institute on behalf of commercial marketers, and goes back forty years now). That this birdbrain thinks the GOP owns the individualism brand and that's why it will survive unscathed is not only a puerile notion, but is itself just part of a lame branding exercise, sort of a "say it often enough and it will catch on" meme, and I doubt that it will work.


    There are still plenty of people who will vote for Republicans out of very traditional impulses, but, increasingly, the front men and women of the GOP are seen as stupid, venal and bigoted, and that's bound to erode their support over time. As for kids embracing the GOP as a bastion of individuality, as if it were an iPad, good luck with that. It wasn't old Kansas Republican farmers that made No Logo a bestseller.

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  8. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

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  9. Spaghetti Lee1:17 AM

    Also: For all his griping about liberalism being old hat, the whole "It's actually cool to embrace consumerism!" shtick is no spring chicken either. In fact, except for certain come-and-go subcultures, it's been nothing but the latter for almost 50 years. These guys act like no one's ever heard of consumer capitalism and they're about to blow our minds by talking about what a radically liberating act it is to buy things. It's like an entire political party is still doing pot in the freshman dorm.


    Also also: Apple, Google, and Facebook as "enablers of individualization?" Somewhere, Richard Stallman shudders involuntarily.

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  10. Am I the only person who finds something hilarious about writing an article about how branding is dead and then citing Apple? Especially from a guy who's allegedly a consultant?

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  11. FMguru1:24 AM

    They've been doing that for a long time, as this blog has repeatedly demonstrated - hilarious explanations of how the popularity of popular thing X just proves that conservatism is the true motive force behind all culture and thought. This is just the most recent in the long line of articles that prove that Star Wars / The Wire / Lena Dunham's "Girls" / The Beatles / Mad Men and so on are, in fact, conservative works of popular culture and therefore liberalism is a shriveled and dying belief that's too stupid to notice that it's got one foot in the grave ha ha ha.



    This particular manifestation does seem to be tap dancing more manically and in a larger puddle of flop-sweat than usual, which is because of the "clap harder, dammit!" dynamic you've detailed.

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  12. AngryWarthogBreath1:29 AM

    Customers at the decade’s most ubiquitous national food merchant, Starbucks, have developed an entire language to express their half-caf, soy-no-whip, double-shot individual solutions.


    L-latte sipping elitist conservatives? WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS

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  13. AngryWarthogBreath1:35 AM

    Also, if you want to own "choice" as an equity, maybe identifying yourself with the dying anti-gay cause isn't such a hot idea.

    Roy's already said it better than I'm going to, but, pugnacious little warthog as I am, I'm going to ruin everything anyway.

    He clearly wants to leave gay marriage behind after mentioning it in the first paragraph, but that - and the mention of Mad Men - are something of a tell. He claims that Mad Men shows the dinosaur ad execs becoming extinct through their campaigns of One Choice For Everyone (as opposed to Facebook, which wants you to use all kinds of different social media products; can't count the number of Google Plus and Twitter ads I see on Facebook feeds every day), and that commie liberal commiepants will soon disappear just like them, because the right offers people choices.


    But he's hitching his wagon to the movement of "my type of marriage fits me, SO IT WILL FIT YOU TOO OR YOU'VE RUINED MINE", and "those manly ad executives on Mad Men are so cool/unfairly maligned by liberal screenwriters".


    Roy does an excellent job, as ever, but he's rather like a mighty lioness who's spent three hours stalking her prey, only to find that it's disemboweled itself and is lying strewn over several acres of savanna. "There," it says, breathing its last, looking up into its hunter's bewildered eyes. "That showed you."

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  14. montag21:39 AM

    "These guys act like no one's ever heard of consumer capitalism and
    they're about to blow our minds by talking about what a radically
    liberating act it is to buy things.
    "


    Yep, it was one of great American marketing con jobs, one that tends to ring a bit hollow today with real unemployment at 15-16%, poverty at close to 18% and rising, millions of people sucked into HELOCs and second mortgages that cost them their homes, declining real wages and increasing job insecurity, along with a growing sense of dismal prospects for the future. In that environment, being smothered in debt to buy overpriced shit doesn't seem particularly liberating....

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  15. DocAmazing1:39 AM

    There are many varieties of Chardonnay and arugula, as well. The potential for individuality though consumption of decadent coastal elitist poisons is great.

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  16. AngryWarthogBreath1:40 AM

    I await conservatism's 2016 rebranding to have always been about apps for your smartphone - where you build a village or tower and pay the creators $3.99 to unlock the super-special blue houses, and those commie libs never could understand micropayments, which is why Reagan Society Village Gated Community means surefire victory for Marco Rubio Ted Cruz Rand Paul this inanimate carbon rod - with great interest.

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  17. AngryWarthogBreath1:42 AM

    Conservatism has always supported your right to have spicy mustard if you want it. That's what individual rights are all about.

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  18. Tehanu1:43 AM

    "Mad Men," the show all about how totally fucked up things were before the Beatles arrived, is the thing proving how conservatism is winning? My head hurts.

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  19. montag22:05 AM

    "Conservatism has always supported your right to have spicy mustard if you want can afford it."

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  20. "To boil it down for you, the left is old and gross because Obamacare is sooo LBJ and soaked in "the collective emotional DNA of the post-war era," which the kids don't like because it's analog."

    Roy, I just finished watching an episode of Buffy (Season 2, "Bad Eggs") and this brilliant line could have been lifted right out of that episode. Great writing as usual. [makes sincere deferential gesture then promptly sets aflame today's writing efforts]

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  21. As always, their fetish for individualism only applies to individuals within the white straight Christian male middle- and upper-class bubble. People who don't express themselves in the corporate-approved manner are doing it wrong.

    You're 100% right: it's a starkly 1950s attitude, with names like Facebook and Starbucks thrown in to give it a thin gloss of 21st century.

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  22. Odder2:21 AM

    We've been reduced to buying green tea from the Red Chinese!

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  23. GregMc2:26 AM

    You laugh, but think back to the very first scene in the very first episode: the waiter (?) tells Don that he smokes his brand because that's what THEY gave him! Don't you SEE?



    And SPOILERS the most recent episode is clearly about (among other things) Betty toying with the idea of coming out as a conservative.


    (and can we rule out a future appearance by Saul Alinsky?)

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  24. Kordo2:54 AM

    Yeah, that's what happens to me after reading Doghouse Riley's stuff.

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  25. Kordo3:30 AM

    A few oddbits from the DC page-

    a) "Founding Partner, OnMessage Inc."

    You're the only employee of OnMessage Inc, aren't you, Mr. Todd? The company's assets consist of your laptop and a bunch of free instant coffee samples from Gold Cup the sales rep gave you because he thought you ran an actual business, right? I once had a t-shirt that said "Federal Breast Inspector", and I believe I had a more legitimate right to that job title than you do to yours. I actually got to feel up some boobies, whereas you will never be hired to sell anything again after this public bed-shitting, Inshallah.

    b) Featured Articles at the bottom of the page:

    -"The 10 creepiest teachers who allegedly banged or tried to molest students last month". Why just the last month? Is Debra LaFavre cold product now? Is one month the holding limit at your spank-bank? Spoiled whippersnappers! I can still rub one out to Mary Lou Retton if I hafta. Kids these days have no appreciation for the Classics.

    -"Fat naked woman goes on rampage in German gym". Not nearly as entertaining as it sounded, turns out.

    - The word "Teastablishment", which concept I refuse to explore sober.

    c) From the Advice section, I'm guessing: "To prevent mass murders, lock up crazy people". Not selling them machine guns seems more cost-effective to me, frankly. Too bad NO ONE IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY likes that idea, huh? Also, too, it was written by Ann Coulter. You've been warned.

    On a personal note, how fuckin' clueless do you have to be to use Apple as an example of individualization? You're running OnMessage Inc off of your Macintosh, aren't you, Brad?

    O, yah! Someone called Michelle Rhee an "asian bitch", thereby making all Liberals and Democrats the real racists forever and ever, no take-backs.

    So, there's that.

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  26. I get the feeling that Todd probably isn't personally opposed to gay marriage, or for it for that matter. Check his bio and you'll see that he's not a pundit but a strategist, which means his opinion on any given issue is "Whatever you say, it's your dime."

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  27. "Similarly, the rest of society’s institutions nationalized as well — the
    American Legion, the Moose Lodge and the Methodist Church saw their
    ranks explode as the parents of Baby Boomers equated quality with
    conformity."

    Don't know about the Methodists or the Moose, but I would have thought the growth of membership in the American Legion by the parents of Baby Boomers might have had something to do with the Second World War- Greatest Generation and all that.

    "Fifty years later, Budweiser now disguises its products as pseudo-craft brands"


    So top-down corporate oligopoly tries to bullshit the rubes by proclaiming "Freedom!" - he might be on to something here, that does sound like the Republican Party., that does does sound like the Republicans.

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  28. Tudor Jennings5:36 AM

    Whereas Liberals have bribed the electorate by standing at street corners, handing out free spicy mustard coupons to black people.

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  29. mommadillo6:32 AM

    It is liberals, not conservatives, who are chained to an ideology built for yesterday’s culture.

    Wait, wait, wait. This makes absolutely no sense at all. What about that whole "Standing athwart history yelling STOP" thing? What about the DICTIONARY DEFINITION of the word conservative?

    These assholes think they can just redefine whatever they like any time it suits them. What the fuck is "conservative" about that?

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  30. aimai6:52 AM

    I have to agree with Warthogbreath on this one--carefully not posting under his/her post lest I violate some unknown rule on threading and ownership--this is the last gasp of the herdbeast before it gets eaten. But I also think--and we discussed this on a thread far below--that this is just a kind of drawing back to better leap.

    The obvious conclusion isn't that homophobia will ever win the day, its that the Conservatives will now rebrand and appeal to everyone as the party of the polymorphously perverse. "Have it Your Way" has been mooted as the new slogan and the ad campaign practically writes itself.

    Picture this: a businssman in a suit toe tapping in an airport stall. The vice mayor of bumfuck Tenn. lets it all hang out and moto-bates while doing 90 in the carpool lane (superimposed on the screen "You're never alone when your erection occupies the passanger seat") David Vitter has been tasked to appear in a diaper. That Akin guy will explain that rape sex is safe sex.



    Finally the party will become the party of sex, drugs, and divorce and over "motor divorce" and "same day divorce" enabling its membership to get married and divorced at the RMV and on the same day as they get married.

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  31. aimai6:54 AM

    SEK's brilliant transcript for R/on/and Paul yesterday, linked on the thread below, makes your chat bot theory look really good.

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  32. aimai6:55 AM

    The Marlboro Man was really real. Don't try to tell me any different.

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  33. GregMc6:57 AM

    You know who *else* was prepared to rebrand his political party to suit changing times?

    What? I was going to say Deng. Sheesh.


    Also: I would help make ads for the party you described.

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  34. aimai6:58 AM

    I understand from reading SEK's latest breakdown of the most recent Mad Men that Don is so anhedonic and miserable that he tries to sell an image to Hawaii tourism based on a picture of clothes on the beach, footprints heading into the water, and the slogan "Hawaii: the Jumping Off Point." The Tourist Board storms out after pointing out to him, icily, that the man in the picture has clearly committed suicide--he's abandoned his life and drowned himself. Don just can't see it. He's left puzzling about how they read his campaign that way as they lose the campaign. Yeah. We're really all taking life lessons from the suicidal anhedonic guy.

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  35. aimai7:00 AM

    Possible alternate slogan we're kicking around

    "Its my party and I'll ___ if I want to." Please send 9.99 and a SASE and resume and we'll let you know if you have the job. Sorry, I meant to say "welcome you to our entrepreneurial team."

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  36. When corporate assholes finally discovered that people under 40 were an untapped market with disposable income after the 1960s "youth revolution," they quickly began selling pre-packaged Individualism as a product.


    To believe that masses of consumers buying factory-made coffee, smartphones, and decal-covered laptops is an expression of Individualism is to be a complete fucking moron (or a corporate ad-man, which is pretty much the same thing).

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  37. redoubt7:48 AM

    Except when Barry X eats it on a sandwich with ooga booga arugula.

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  38. I love the idea of the American Legion as liberal icon.

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  39. Another, and earlier, American marketing con job was to convince people that there was no Aristocracy in this nation and anyone could be Somebody. The old hierarchy of landed gentry only had to give up calling themselves Barons, Dukes and Earls for acronyms like CEO and COO, and they suddenly had all the perqs with none of even the most trivial responsibilities.


    It was only when the "peasants" started to get a whiff of the old crusties that they came up with the "You, too, can live like a Baron in this Great Nation, simply by buying shit and making us richer."


    Voila! another win for the "real" people of planet earth (of whom there are 532).

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  40. Derelict7:52 AM

    This constant grasping after what they do not understand (in this instance, pop culture) is what makes modern conservatives unintelligible to the average voter. They can run the dog whistles for racism and many pick up on that. But meshuggah nonsense like the Daily Caller's output makes most people smile politely while glancing at their watch and saying, "oh! Look at the time!"

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  41. Indeed - just look up the 'Centralia Massacre'.

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  42. Halloween_Jack7:59 AM

    Also, let's remember that choice is really only for those who can afford it, or who are willing to mortgage their future in order to pretend that they can afford it. If the poors don't like it, they can move to North Dakota, all of them, and get those big-ticket jobs that people keep writing about. If you have a problem with the local whackjob threatening your school with an assault rifle, your choices are limited to Smith and/or Wesson. I have slim to nil doubt that right now, some bright-eyed son of a bitch in the House is working on a bill that would mandate that EBT cards can only be used to purchase gruel.

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  43. redoubt8:05 AM

    Because he's an ad man, which means he gets paid to find new ways to sell an old product. (Recall how the [bad] Roger Ailes got his start in the political arena.)
    He's trying to link conservatism with the likes of Apple, Facebook and Starbucks, companies that worship "innovation" and "rebranding" but despise "competition." That ain't by accident.

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  44. The same sort of "conservatism" that is all about destroying the environment, social security, long-term economic growth, educating the future generations, and pretty much anything that calls for foresight and planning for the human race to still be around in a hundred years--you know things that actually call for conservation and caution.

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  45. It makes my blood boil to think of how individually empowered I was by the American healthcare system before those damned Dimocrats had to come along and ruin everything with their commie schemes.

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  46. Ah yes, so the party that's kicked out everybody to the left of Barry Goldwater and reverted to an ideology not seen since the goddamn NINETEENTH CENTURY is going to lead the way into the individualistic and modern future. WAT.

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  47. fraser8:58 AM

    Ah, those rebel conservartives! How they hate conformity, with everyone marching in lockstep and embracing the status quo!

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  48. fraser9:15 AM

    "Today’s American liberalism is little changed from the incarnation best
    expressed in the New Deal and its larger successor, the Great Society" Yes, I remember FDR coming out so prominently for gay marriage after he won re-election in 1936.

    Overall, it reads like a version of the McArdle/Brooks thesis that gay marriage is a conservative victory. Only Todd can't think of anything to say so he just throws in everything but the kitchen sink to see what sticks.

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  49. Davis9:34 AM

    Brad Todd...I love that name.

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  50. Arugula boogula. I think you're on to something.

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  51. "So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from health insurance to local electricity generation?"

    So he can't tell the difference between my wanting to wear a shirt that not every one else is wearing or an iphone vs htc using hipsters, and my being able to have the same quality healthcare as a rich person without becoming impoverished? I'd like to see Todd make an ad directed at all the googling, facebook-using, micro-brew drinking hipsters that touts drinking fracking water as a benefit of individualization.

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  52. TomParmenter10:23 AM

    The yellow peril.

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  53. So do we want free shit or $4 coffees? I don't get it.

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  54. And no mention of Kickstarter, Threadless, 3-d printing, etc? It's almost like he has no idea what he's talking about.

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  55. sharculese10:40 AM

    Fifty years later, Budweiser now disguises its products as pseudo-craft brands


    So I take it this ad man missed the huge rollout for Budweiser Platinum, the beer for people who like the idea of paying more for beer, but not the idea of better tasting beer.

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  56. And WIC will only be useable on specific flavors of gruel.

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  57. Mr. Wonderful10:54 AM

    There's got to be a name for this--this confident extrusion of analysis and prediction that seems so astute until it dawns on you, and your dog, that it is objectively, visibly wrong. Is this what they mean by "post-modernist political commentary"? Where they type something like, "Bernie Sanders, whether he knows it or not, is actually a Republican, because he's a member of the Senate, which is one of our oldest and most traditional public institutions"?


    Or do they know that it's bullshit, but darn it, it's OUR bullshit? OR--this is my new theory--is it like the barrel of herring the merchants sell one to another, until some naive putz opens it and tries to eat it (PTUI!) and has to be told, "Schmuck! It's not for eating. It's for selling." Thus, Brad Todd to his readers: "Schmucks! It's not for believing. It's for writing."

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  58. Donald_Dump10:56 AM

    Brad Todd is Billy Bob 2.0.

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  59. Counterpoint: As Roy has documented recently, many conservative pundits, having conceded defeat on gay marriage, are now getting irked all over again about divorce. That's a battle they lost decades ago (despite New York's strange foot-dragging on the no-fault front), suggesting that they're actually just really, really dumb.

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  60. Well, Apple/Google/Facebook are the three companies that get the most free publicity from our wonderful press. If he wanted to talk about...I don't know, the Raspberry Pi, he'd have to do some research.


    Or...hire a consultant. We might be on the cusp of a great new scam, here.

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  61. Halloween_Jack11:02 AM

    Well, Anheuser-Busch works both sides, really; he's probably talking about things like this. AB also tried eating Guinness' lunch several years ago with Bare Knuckle, their version of an Irish stout.

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  62. Halloween_Jack11:03 AM

    There's something about this that's so bro, it's like how much more bro could this be? And the answer is none. None more bro.

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  63. Maybe ad men have a brain filter. If you can't monetize it, they're incapable of acknowledging its existence.

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  64. Speaking of intersections between fake craft beer and shitty ad men, I recently got a great kick out of this reddit post where apparently Coors wanted to get in on this social marketing thing but hired someone who was really, really bad at their job. Even reddit wasn't fooled for a second (if you look to the right you'll see 24 upvotes and 140 downvotes).

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  65. sharculese11:13 AM

    Oh yeah, I know about the fake craft beers, I was more just pointing out that this is the absolutely wrong time to claim Budweiser is hiding it's identity.

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  66. Is his writer-for-Counterpunch doppelganger named Todd Brad? And is there, in some alternate universe, a female author wedded to the idea of fiction written in extremely structured, formal prose named Joyce James?

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  67. It's monosyllabic grunting all the way down.

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  68. Again, I think this is a result of our boy Todd here being a consultant, a glorified ad man. A good ad man never considers whether the product is a good idea, only if they can sell it.

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  69. mortimer11:36 AM

    Democrats cannot abandon redistributionist policies without accepting that Americans, working hard by their own damn selves with tools they’ve been given by a power far greater than a federal agency, can cross class lines and become financially secure.

    Fuck you, Gooper hack. Upward mobility has been virtually nonexistent for the last couple of decades. In the U.S., that is.

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  70. I would like to cuddle with this comment's neckbeard.

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  71. Phillip Morris the Cat11:49 AM

    It's easier for Joe Camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for an ad man to get into heaven.

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  72. zencomix11:53 AM

    Lisa: "You're serving us gruel?"Dolph: "Not quite. This is Krusty Brand Imitation Gruel. Nine out of ten orphans can't tell the difference!"

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  73. mortimer11:54 AM

    BTW, Brad is a founding partner of a Gooper ad agency. Check out their wares. One of their biggest clients is Rick Scott, and they seem to specialize in bullshit and lies. But then they'd have to, wouldn't they?

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  74. tigrismus11:58 AM

    So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from health insurance to local electricity generation?

    Yeah! I want 123 volts, goddammit, and plugs that look like smiley faces.

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  75. Al Swearengen12:14 PM

    That Jindal ad looks like it took dozens of dollars to produce. I'm sure that's what they charged to create an animated PowerPoint deck.


    I rest well knowing that rightwing suckers are getting taken to the cleaners.

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  76. Halloween_Jack12:20 PM

    Heh. What MeFi would call "Pepsi Blue".

    ReplyDelete
  77. On that note-- and this is totally true-- last night I dreamed that I picked up a random book I found lying around and it was the collected works of Alicublog commenters, published by Roy. I was a little irked to find that he'd done this without our knowledge, but I had to admit it was a really interesting book, even though the contents bore no resemblance to anything I remembered-- apparently people had been posting all kinds of dramatic sketches, 10-page prose poems, etc. that I had never noticed. And of course I had something in there which, though not perfect, seemed pretty goddamn brilliant, which I can't remember a word of.

    ReplyDelete
  78. Remember the heady days of America's glory, when tractor parts weren't universal?

    ReplyDelete
  79. whetstone12:42 PM

    When President Lyndon Johnson pushed through the Great Society programs in the 1960s, every decision-maker had lived through two searing national crises, the Depression and World War II, which, along with new broadcast communications technology, had turned a regionalized country into a common culture. Don Draper’s America was a customer base primed to accept nationalized solutions to every problem in sight.

    When I get fired from journalism, there's a chance I'll end up in advertising. This is why I fear it: once it gets far enough into your brain, it can convince you that the American social safety net emerged from the Great Depression not because an entire generation had seen the void, but because of BRANDING.

    So, Brad Todd (and may I say, Brad Todd, great industry name: Brad. Todd.): explain to us how to sell this new generation of hepcats on individualized custom solutions to rapacious capitalism. I'll spot you one: "the ownership society" has already been tried.

    ReplyDelete
  80. Guestington P. Gorcestershire12:51 PM

    Yes, I love the idea of expressing my individuality through the consumer good known as health care. Hours spent at my dining room table, poring over glossy mailers from the health care industry until I find that one, very special plan suited only for MY internal organs.
    Bonus for those of us with elderly parents: Imagine the hours of fun with mom on the phone, trying to sort through junk-mailed offers from the three dozen private plans they replace Medicare with. It's like when you had to long-distance trouble-shoot her failed PC and AOL subscription, but with co-pays!

    ReplyDelete
  81. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:28 PM

    Wait a minute... does this mean that the Volvo-driving, latte-sipping elitists are conservatives now?

    ReplyDelete
  82. During WW2, the British 8th Army fighting in N Africa called the US-built M3 Stuart the 'Honey' because it was so easy to repair and maintain. You could pull components from several wrecks to build one running vehicle, a near impossible proposition with British tanks as they were essentially handmade.

    ReplyDelete
  83. gocart mozart1:28 PM

    I would like to give all my possessions to the poor and follow this comment.

    ReplyDelete
  84. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:31 PM

    So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left
    still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from
    health insurance to local electricity generation?



    Ya know, the idiocy of this is that the only thing I expect from my health insurance or electricity generation is that it works. If I get injured, I want my claim paid, period. If I plug my laptop into an outlet, I want the battery to be recharged. Sure, I want choice in which pizzeria I can order from or which draft beer I order at a bar, but I just want my basic utilities and services to work- the last thing I want out of my electricity provider is variety.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:32 PM

    Let's all be individuals together.

    ReplyDelete
  86. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:34 PM

    Blast, Angry Warthog Breath beat me to the punch. That's what I get for not reading the thread.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:36 PM

    Don Draper's America? Don Draper is a fictional character, his America, like Conservative America, is a fictional setting.

    ReplyDelete
  88. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:36 PM

    An no "ground", safety's for wimps!

    ReplyDelete
  89. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard1:44 PM

    What do we want? $4 shit coffees!
    When do we want them? On reconsideration... NEVER!

    ReplyDelete
  90. KatWillow1:45 PM

    Are you sure? The cons got awfully upset when Obama put spicy mustard on his food.

    ReplyDelete
  91. KatWillow1:47 PM

    Doghouse and Roy, separated at birth?

    ReplyDelete
  92. KatWillow1:48 PM

    Don't you hate it when that happens?

    ReplyDelete
  93. KatWillow1:50 PM

    But- but- Starbucks supports both Gay marriage and the NRA! And their profit was above 30% this (quarter?) year.

    ReplyDelete
  94. KatWillow1:53 PM

    Considering the way they feel about gay marriage, I suppose if the ever DO come around to supporting it, they'll be in favor of bestiality and sex with kids... oh, wait. (ps: bestiality is spelled just like that)

    ReplyDelete
  95. mgmonklewis1:58 PM

    Verily.

    ReplyDelete
  96. As goofy as this point about leftist electricity generation (???) not being individualistic enough is, it's almost one of the more ominous ones he makes. Electricity generation is something that you *can* buy individual solutions for, but only if you can afford the upfront cost, the maintenance, the fuel... And that's why the wingnnuts want it that way! Those wealthy enough can run their houses off diesel generators, everyone else can live in squalor. Banana republic here we come!

    ReplyDelete
  97. [In unison] Yes! We're all individuals! We're all different!

    ReplyDelete
  98. [Singing] Bradley Todd ... Shoooow.

    ReplyDelete
  99. mgmonklewis2:08 PM

    Dear Brad Todd:



    Regarding your article: That's not writing. That's typing.

    Sincerely,

    Truman Capote

    ReplyDelete
  100. aimai3:05 PM

    There's a difference between standardization and standards and communist uniformity--the state has been guaranteeing standardized weights and measures, the quality of flour in bread, the quantity of impurities in major commodities since...oh...history. Extending the guarantee of a standardized form of insurance coverage to health insurance is right in line with every major advance in social organization ever. When you buy a car you use a standard contract, why not when you buy health insurance? The fact that its more complicated and covers more kinds of eventualities--and that its more important--doesnt mean you want more opportunities to negotiate things on the fly. It means that its even more important not to end up in the same situation as the Monty Python Sketch where the priest discovers that he "signed the papers for the kind of insurance where we never pay you anything. But you can have a naked lady."


    aimai

    ReplyDelete
  101. aimai3:06 PM

    Sorry, I see you got to this first. Curses! Shakes fist at Discus.

    ReplyDelete
  102. aimai3:08 PM

    One of their biggest clients is Rick Scott, and they seem to specialize in bullshit and lies." I think what you mean is "but I repeat myself."

    ReplyDelete
  103. aimai3:09 PM

    I got a great letter from Elizabeth Warren, my senator (still get a kick out of that) pointing out that her brother had started and run several companies in his life, had always "lived by his wits" and entirely by his own efforts, had paid into social security his entire life and damn it deserved to get every penny out of it now that he was living on it as his sole income--an income of 13,000 a YEAR. It boggles my mind.

    ReplyDelete
  104. aimai3:10 PM

    You've tried the restiality, now try the bestiality.

    ReplyDelete
  105. Provider_UNE3:21 PM

    Holy FuckMonkeyOnaFuckiingStick How did I miss the last three threads!


    Oh well, you wins some and you lose...I suppose.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  106. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard3:35 PM

    Personally, I'm a firm believer in government-run utilities. If it's the sort of thing that lends itself to monopolization and the sort of thing which is crucial to the operation of other businesses, it should be government-run.

    ReplyDelete
  107. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard3:37 PM

    You're lucky to even get imitation gruel, we only got bowls of steam.

    ReplyDelete
  108. XeckyGilchrist4:01 PM

    I'm sick of all you liberals saying that the Right isn't about choice. The Bush Admin gave you the choice of 632 different and contradictory reasons why invading Iraq while enacting tax cuts for the rich was necessary.

    ReplyDelete
  109. smut clyde4:04 PM

    And it only seems yesterday that David Brooks was all happy about same-sex marriages because it proves that "Freedom from choice is what we want". No, wait, it was all of last week.

    I can't see any mention of Adam Curtis or Century of the Self anywhere in the thread so I'll just mention them here.

    ReplyDelete
  110. What do we want? FRENCH PRESS!!!

    When do we want it? IN FOUR TO FIVE MINUTES!!

    ReplyDelete
  111. Yeah! I should be able to use any color wiring that I want to!

    ReplyDelete
  112. sharculese4:12 PM

    Oh god, I got fooled by Batch 19 a couple weeks ago, and the nicest thing I can say about it is that it had slightly more flavor than normal Coors.

    ReplyDelete
  113. BG, ribbons in my hair4:26 PM

    Brad Todd: yet another example of "I have a theory and now I will cherry-pick evidence to support it" thinking. He and Brooks must be BFFs.

    ReplyDelete
  114. Howlin Wolfe4:35 PM

    You said it, aimai. He died of lung cancer, so he was real enuff to die.

    ReplyDelete
  115. mortimer4:49 PM

    Lucky you. Chuck Schumer doesn't write me anymore. Probably for the best. But yeah, that's about what my SS statement says I'll be pulling down when I "retire" (I'll need to work 'til I drop -- hence the quotes). Considering my own entire lifetime of contributions, it'll be such a luxury to mooch off my own money.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Howlin Wolfe5:08 PM

    I likes sciency comments the bestest!

    ReplyDelete
  117. ruviana5:30 PM

    I wish to form a study group with all these comments and stay up all night reading.

    ReplyDelete
  118. Volts? Fuck it, I want plasma!

    That way I can shunt it from the warp nacelles if I feel like being extravagant and wasteful.

    ReplyDelete
  119. AGoodQuestion5:45 PM

    These people already dealt the language a critical blow ten years ago when they decided that some ancient principalities were either "Old Europe" or "New Europe" based on whether they were willing to kiss our ass on the Iraq war. It was a sad day for words meaning things.

    ReplyDelete
  120. AGoodQuestion5:58 PM

    The account has been deleted, but I'm assuming he posted under the name "Not a Salesman!"

    ReplyDelete
  121. AGoodQuestion6:05 PM

    With Rick Scott on their client list they could also branch out into maniacal laughter.

    ReplyDelete
  122. separated?

    ReplyDelete
  123. Brad Todd works with Rick Scott? Does Bill Ted join them for martinis at lunch? I know Sam Johns doesn't, cause he gave up drinking during sunlight hours.

    ReplyDelete
  124. I am unworthy to unlatch the sandal of PMtC's comment.

    ReplyDelete
  125. They'll clog up the water fountains if they keep emptying the bongs into them.

    ReplyDelete
  126. Republicans absolutely respect Individualism, as long as everybody does it the same way.

    ReplyDelete
  127. Every American today takes it upon herself

    Points!

    to solve virtually every
    problem in her life with a self-customized, individually unique,
    bottom-up solution. The angles on the best-selling golf clubs are now
    adjusted after they’re purchased. Workplace software is focused on
    dashboards, designed by the user, unique from one cubicle to the next.
    Customers at the decade’s most ubiquitous national food merchant,
    Starbucks, have developed an entire language to express their half-caf,
    soy-no-whip, double-shot individual solutions.

    So why, in the era of individualization, is the American political left
    still selling top-down mandatory standardization in everything from
    health insurance to local electricity generation?


    One thing I like doing is deciding how every last goddamned little thing in my life should be organized and implemented and paid for because FREEDOM is reading the small print into the wee hours.

    ReplyDelete
  128. That's ironic, because I watched a documentary about the Spanish Armada, and one of the differences between the Spanish and English weaponry was standardization: The English cannons were, the Spanish cannons weren't.

    The Germans in WWII suffered because the tanks had to be shipped back from the Eastern Front for repairs to one central mechanics' depot. Also, the choice was made to turn more out more tanks on the assembly lines rather than use some of the same resources for making parts that the tanks would inevitably need after a certain amount of wear and tear.

    ReplyDelete
  129. smut clyde6:36 PM

    Are you saying that Brad Todd is piggy-backing on someone else's creative work? Unpossible. That would make him a moocher.

    ReplyDelete
  130. smut clyde6:55 PM

    Dusting off my old copies of Vance Packard's books, I find lengthy passages describing how product ranges diversified during the 1950s with the goal of selling consumers individuality through consumption.

    ReplyDelete
  131. ADHDJ6:56 PM

    Sure, you've read Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool, but have you ever read Conquest of Cool on bathtub meth?

    Buried deep beneath the layers of fucknuggetry, he has a point -- just a far more socialist/anti-consumerist one than he intends. The future is one of a wide range of choices in brand-mediated experiences at the expense of actual freedom.

    You can't afford college but you can get your pedantically specific coffee-based beverage of choice. You can't find a job but you can ignore how shitty your life is with thousands of viewing choices on Netflix. You can't afford healthcare, but you can get just about anything on Amazon shipped to you in two days. You can get an endless amount of information and entertainment on the internet, but everything you do is being monitored.

    The future is an endless carnival of glib, shallow choices. Panopticon isn't a prison anymore -- these days it's a mall with a really bitchin' food court.

    ReplyDelete
  132. aimai7:51 PM

    Hell, they're upset he uses the bathrooms at the White House and they are really angry Michelle got bangs.

    ReplyDelete
  133. Spaghetti Lee7:53 PM

    His bros call him Mike Chad.

    ReplyDelete
  134. aimai7:53 PM

    You know, this gives me an idea for how we can get the right wing behind food stamps--make some portion of WIC available for purchasing guns. Y U No want our Poors to defend themselves?

    ReplyDelete
  135. aimai8:00 PM

    My aunt and I did weight watchers together years ago--like 25 years ago--and at the time they had a program called something like "Personal Choice." I've always been fascinated by WWs and its culture and its manipulation of the client and I even gave a paper on it years ago at some anthro conference. I noticed at the time that my aunt was devoted--DEVOTED--to the language of her "choice" when what she was really doing was choosing between extremely limited options in the hope that she might lose weight: i.e. starve herself down to a size 12. She used to say, extremely proudly, "My personal choice today was to eat half a bagel with light cream cheese!" Just saying it seemed to give her some feeling of power.

    ReplyDelete
  136. smut clyde8:09 PM

    Correct me if I am wrong, but did not Berke Breathed begin "Bloom County" right with the first strips by satirising the Burger King bottom-up individualise-your-consumption campaign of the day? In in 19-feckin-80?

    http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/blm/1985/blm850421.gif

    ReplyDelete
  137. smut clyde8:15 PM

    I have heard it said that standardisation and mass production arose in the Napoleonic Wars, in the Royal Navy shipyards.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Block_Mills

    ReplyDelete
  138. At the remarkably decent SoCal burger joint In-N-Out (it even gets a 'thumbs up' in Eric Schlosser's book FAST FOOD NATION) you can order your hamburger protein style which replaces the hamburger bun with large leaves of lettuce. So, uh, yeah....

    ReplyDelete
  139. redoubt8:39 PM

    Is this the point where conservatives go back in time and condemn Ben Franklin for inventing the lightning rod?

    ReplyDelete
  140. redoubt8:43 PM

    Well, you'll never grow up to be Wendell Willkie.

    ReplyDelete
  141. aimai8:56 PM

    I think you won some, Provider_une. I participated in at least two of those threads and I definitely lost something as a result. Brain cells? Joie de vivre?

    ReplyDelete
  142. XeckyGilchrist9:09 PM

    The Bloom County was pre-Atkins, though. (As was the follow-up with "Herring Whopper, heavy mayo.")

    ReplyDelete
  143. XeckyGilchrist9:18 PM

    This comment is totes yiffy.

    ReplyDelete
  144. tigrismus9:37 PM

    LOOXURY!

    ReplyDelete
  145. Je ne sais quoi? Fleur de lis? Ding an sich? Sturm und drang?

    ReplyDelete
  146. montag210:18 PM

    Or peruse Al McCoy's Policing America's Empire, which details how American Legion members were used as wiling volunteers in a domestic spying operation to root out "subversives."


    William Pelley's Silver Shirts were just slackers and wishful thinkers compared to the American Legion.

    ReplyDelete
  147. montag210:26 PM

    In the conservative world, all those poors are, umm, you know, and they're all criminals and already have too many guns. The only time conservatives ever seriously considered gun control was when the Black Panthers were walking around in public with shotguns.

    ReplyDelete
  148. montag210:38 PM

    There's a clever little documentary called "Beer Wars" out there in the ether that pretty much shows that what our diminutively-brained Todd thinks is marketing to individualism is actually classical, old-school oligopoly on the part of the Big Three. The object is not to broaden offerings but to destroy craft brewers, since they represent competition, if only in local and regional markets.

    ReplyDelete
  149. That way I can shunt it from the warp nacelles


    IYKWIMAITYD.

    ReplyDelete
  150. montag211:00 PM

    Yep, and that name is chutzpah, which includes the adamant assertion of that which is nonsense and bullshit.


    But, really, this is as old as the country. Selling snake oil has been an indelible part of the American psyche, and conservatives, like the snake-oil salesman, promise that conservatism will cure anything and everything that ails you, that it is all things to all people, and, if you die because it's made with a little tincture of arsenic to give it "bite," well, you're not around to challenge the sales pitch later.



    Conservatives know that they can say anything, be as outrageous as they please, be utterly wrong, and it won't matter, because they know that there's a sucker born every minute.

    ReplyDelete
  151. montag211:08 PM

    These days, they claim him as one of their own... like every other historical figure in American history.

    ReplyDelete
  152. Ah the memories. Herring Wallbanger. Gin and ketchup.

    ReplyDelete
  153. Anonymous11:48 PM

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  154. smut clyde11:59 PM

    Here in upside-downyland we are stuck with the Type-I Sadface plugs. Apparently this design was adopted in 1937 'as a result of a "Gentlemen's Agreement" between manufacturers'.
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Australian_dual_switched_power_point.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  155. willf1:59 AM

    "I'm not".

    ReplyDelete
  156. willf2:08 AM

    Ya know, the idiocy of this is that the only thing I expect from my health insurance or electricity generation is that it works. If I get injured, I want my claim paid, period.



    That's funny, because insurance companies work entirely the other way around

    ReplyDelete
  157. gainsayer2:41 AM

    SHHHHHHH!

    ReplyDelete
  158. I would call it "Goldbergism", after the author of the masterpiece of the genre, Liberal Fascism

    ReplyDelete
  159. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:07 AM

    You know what's also freedom? Having your claim denied because you missed a deceptively worded clause in the midst of all that small print.

    ReplyDelete
  160. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:10 AM

    Yeah, but they occasionally have to deliver the service that is their entire raison d'etre, claims adjusters and defense attorneys be damned.

    ReplyDelete
  161. Big_Bad_Bald_Bastard5:13 AM

    But... but... he was into science...

    ReplyDelete
  162. The Dark Avenger10:53 AM

    They aren't just in SoCal anymore, there's one here in the county seat here, some 2.5-3 hours drive north of LA, there's one in Salinas, there's one in Fresno, so it's becoming more of a CA thing.

    ReplyDelete
  163. IBM employees back in the 1970's used to joke that IBM valued "wild ducks" as long as they flew in formation.

    ReplyDelete
  164. j_bird12:05 PM

    A vocabulary, sure, but an entire language? Does one now ask for a latte using a non-English grammar? I half-caf latte quad skim want! Double-parked please my Subaru is quickly!

    ReplyDelete
  165. slavdude12:08 PM

    I haven't gotten into the show, but from what I have seen, it starts in 1963 and will end sometime around 1970 or so. One of the few episodes I did see involved one of the characters (high on weed) giving some stranger a handjob during a showing of Born Free.

    ReplyDelete
  166. slavdude12:19 PM

    "Nobody Can Lick Our Dick!"



    Campaign button from Nixon's 1960 run. No fooling--I have some of them.

    ReplyDelete
  167. slavdude12:30 PM

    I'd call this cafeteria conservatism, which is like the cafeteria Christianity and cafeteria constitutionalism these clowns like to use. They have the money to pick and choose things that they want to adhere to. Standards are for liberals and other inferior people.

    ReplyDelete
  168. billcinsd1:59 PM

    This is of course a Dr. Pepper commercial. well every Dr. pepper commercial

    ReplyDelete
  169. The term "fever dream" is thrown around a lot these days, but seriously, fucking seriously, this reads like they transcribed the babblings of someone with a dangerously high fever.


    Outdated hatred of the gays isn't really outdated because liberals are the ones really stuck in the past because Budweiser sucks and the Methodists are all conformists, which you can plainly see if you watch Mad Men, which as you know is an allegory for LBJ and Medicare, because America should be run exactly like a Starbucks and people should be able to generate electricity however they want, the 120 volt standard be damned.


    FEVER DREAM.

    ReplyDelete
  170. gocart mozart12:38 PM

    I, state your name, am an individual.

    ReplyDelete
  171. gocart mozart12:42 PM

    The NRA doesn't want the Blah's to have guns. See Panthers, Black.

    ReplyDelete
  172. gocart miozart12:42 PM

    See also montag2's comment

    ReplyDelete
  173. gocart mozart12:45 PM

    That is so fucking sad dude.

    ReplyDelete
  174. Alan in SF1:06 PM

    Brad might ask himself why the explosion of innovation and entrepreneurialism he celebrates comes out of the San Francisco Bay Area rather than North Dakota or Mississippi.

    ReplyDelete
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