Excuse me while I climb up on my soap box for just a minute. The great Hall of Fame baseball pitcher, “Satchel” Paige, once said, “Don’t look back, they might be gaining on you.” But I can’t help looking back…in horror…at this past election’s political television advertising. What kind of people do these pathetic politicians think we are ?
I am not a political guy. This is not a political podcast. But give me a break…no matter what your political views might be, if you believed half of what the politician’s commercials said about their opponents, you would want to pack your bags and sneak out of the country under cover of darkness to someplace safe. It’s sad. Also dumb. And it gets my Louie-Louie Generation Brooklyn attitude going. So please hear me out for just a few minutes.
The political “experts” all say negative advertising is the only kind that works. I say, “HOGWASH !” Fear fails in America. Always. You and I have seen that over and over again. We’re just not cowards…no matter what they think. But these pathetic politicans keep trying to scare us into voting for them. Actually, they just want us to vote against the other guy. It’s pathetic. But I think I know why they keep doing it.
The people who specialize in political advertising…the “experts,” make up a small, but powerful “Old Boys Club.” They usually work for one party, because that’s how they develop their client base. Some of those guys are brilliant. But as far as I’m concerned, all of them are contemptible. They sell fear. They either don’t know what kind of people we are, or they simply don’t respect us. That’s a mistake bad guys have made ever since the days of the Red Coats.
People who use fear in advertising are like comedians who rely on dirty jokes to get laughs. Those guys see boogie men in black helicopters everywhere. Lots of times the boogie men are the “ALIENS!” (As in people who are not like us.) Of course, aliens have always been a problem in this country. Ask any Native American about that. Or, better yet, remember that another word for “Alien” is “Immigrant”…as in what people probably called your grandparents and mine, when they walked off a ship docked in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.
With all due respect to the great “Satch,” I’d say that right now it would actually be a good idea to look back, so you can get a positive I.D. on these guys. That way you’ll recognize them if they’re around again next election day. Which, unfortunately, will probably be the case.
Dick’s Details Quiz. All answers are in the current podcast.
1- How do you get sexy perfume to hit hardest ?
2- What do the guys who make Viagra have against the asprin guys ?
3- Why do male missionaries assume the missionary position ?
Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.
Pathetic politics is nothing new. One of the heros of America’s fight for independence was Patrick Henry…the guy who said, “Give me liberty or give me death”…he owned 65 slaves at the time. Even Jefferson owned slaves while he was writing the Declaration Of Independence. I guess sometimes independence is a matter of your perspective. There’s a story about that in the brand new Night Connections 3 personal audio cd. It’s called…Independence.
The guy in the story is learning the hard way that before somebody else will respect you, you have to respect yourself. Sometimes that’s not so easy to do…especially when inside…you understand that you are also, spoiled, manipulative, and selfish. “Independence” is from the brand new Night Connections 3 personal audio cd. If you like it, you can just keep the current podcast, or if you want a fresh copy, just download it from the icon on the home page.
The first few mornings after a big time political campaign can be really tough to take. It’s like you wake up and find that your grammar school class is now running the country. You can’t help but remember Big Louie’s explanation of the word “politics.” He says it’s a combination of two words…”poly” which means many…and “tics” as in small, nasty bugs. Big Louie has good explanations for most things.
Of course, so did Satchel Paige. “Satch” said a lot of things besides, “Don’t look back, they may be gaining on you.” One of his most interesting sayings was, “Age is a matter of mind over matter. If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.” I guess he didn’t mind. He threw his last major league pitches…a three strikeout inning, at the age of sixty.
“Satch’s” life was full of strike outs, smiles, and stories. He overcame poverty, race-ism, and…fear…he was human after all. And he got death threats every day. The Boogie Men tried to scare him out of living his American, major league dream. But they couldn’t. The bad guys just didn’t understand the kind of guy he was.
Here’s my point: No one remembers the bad guys who made those death threats. But we sure remember “Satch”. Because that’s the way it is in America. Fear always fails in America. Even our pathetic politicians should be able to learn that simple lesson.
All they’d have to do is go to any Major League Baseball game, and listen to 50,000 of us making thunder…standing up and singing that song about America that starts every game. The one that ends with the line about, “the land of the free, AND THE HOME OF THE BRAVE.”
THAT’s the kind of people we are.
Personally I don’t like negative advertising. I had made up my mind on a candidate for the last election but after seeing and hearing her negative slams to make the other guy look bad to make her look good, when the ballot came around I vote for #3 and wrote in “none of the above”. I’m a Nightlighter!!!!!!
I agree that the quaity of political advertising is pathetic. However, to answer your question, “What kind of people do these pathetic politicians think we are ?” it depends on who we are. The sad fact is that politicians realize that to win elections, it is necessary to win the “lowest common denominator vote.” They also count on that those who are smarter than the lowest common denominator will realize this.
Besides the negativity, I also marvel at the horrid acting. Pols obviously didn’t spend much in the production of their ads. Most of the people in the ads make William Shatner look like he should be doing Shakespearian theater.