I Wanna Be Unbranded

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O K, so there is apparently this TV show called "Jersey Shore." From what I can tell, the show's basic premise is to put a group of vapid, dimwitted and marginally attractive young people of Italian heritage into a beach house for the summer and record them getting drunk, getting into fistfights, and generally behaving in the fashion you might expect of vapid, dimwitted and marginally attractive young people turned loose with a lot of cash and a license to act like inebriated baboons for our amusement.

The show is apparently quite popular, which is not surprising given the fact that what American TV viewers seem to crave most these days is to watch people to whom they can feel morally superior.

One of the instant celebrities created by the show is a diminutive lass named Nicole Polizzi, who goes by the nickname "Snooki." Baby-faced, raven-haired, and with a 4-foot 9-inch body that looks as if it was pumped into her clothing under extreme pressure, Snooki is to bad behavior what Michelangelo was to interior decoration.

Space restrictions prohibit detailing all of Snooki's antics, but they include drunkenness, disorderly conduct and a criminal charge for "annoying people" (which is apparently a crime in Jersey. Who knew?). Suffice it to say, as we do down South, that this girl acts like she's got no raising at all. Bless her heart.

Yet, as so often happens with even B-list celebrities, Snooki is showered with gifts and swag from various fashion houses. One thing that has always mildly annoyed me about our celebrity-obsessed culture is the way companies send lots of free stuff to people who can afford to buy it.

It's a marketing tool, of course; companies think that if someone sees, for example, Angelina Jolie with one of their handbags or scarves, women will experience an overwhelming desire to run right out and buy that very item, and to heck with the cost. Depressingly, they're often right.

In the case of Snooki, however, we're seeing a new phenomenon: Companies are sending the tiny trollop their competitor's products, in the hopes that viewers will see her sleazing around with the other guy's handbags on her shoulder and associate the competing brand with trashiness and tackiness. It's called either "pre-emptive product placement" (PEPP) or "unbranding."

I've got to tell you, folks, every time I think American inventiveness and innovation is dead, something like this comes along to let me know it isn't. I mean, this is absolutely brilliant, in an evil-genius sort of way.

The possibilities are endless. Can we expect to see BP start running commercials showing disgraced former CEO Tony Hayward filling up at a Chevron station? Or maybe the loathsome Jesse James, who broke the heart of that sweet Sandra Bullock, could revive his career by doing ads for, say, Warner Brothers, in which he gives double thumbs up reviews to movies by, say, Paramount?

Which leads us, as always, to the question on your Humble Columnist's mind whenever he comes across a new cultural phenomenon: How can he cash in on this?

If the e-mails and comments I get on the Pilot's website are any indication, I occasionally make some people unhappy, some angry, and on a few occasions, I make people nearly insane with fury. This is particularly true of wingnuts, yay-hoos, bigots, neo-fascists, mouth-breathers and morons.

By the way, long live Rachel Maddow! Keith Olbermann rules! Viva George Soros! Viva Michael Moore! Viva the New Socialist Order!

There. With the groundwork done, and the proper parties whipped into a fine froth of rage, let's get down to some serious unbrandin'. Dell, Gateway, Asus Computer: Any of you guys want to bump up your sales around here, send me a new Apple laptop or an iPad. I'll be sure to mention it in this space.

Lexus, Porsche, Mercedes: If I find a new Beemer in the driveway, I'll be sure to drive it everywhere, tailgating, honking the horn, and leaving the turn signal on for miles and miles and miles.

If the fine guitar-makers at Gibson want to send me a new Fender Stratocaster, or if the folks at Fender want to send me a new Gibson Les Paul, I promise to play that sucker so loud and long that the very sight of your competitor's product will make people curl into a ball and whimper.

This had better work.

STORM SURGE Reviewed!

Over at his blog Not The Baseball Pitcher, Randy Johnson gives STORM SURGE a great review. Thanks, Randy!

Je Suis Un Rock Star?

More of the usual selective outrage over "tone" from the Pilot's website:

I don't understand why Dusty Rhodes [sic] has so many nasty comments to readers who have an opinion. The Pilot has allowed him to have a "rock star" attitude and a forum to spout it. It doesn't read as political intelect [sic] Mr. Rhodes [sic], but rather, as hateful childishness.

Considering the tone of a lot of the comments on that website, her outrage about 'nasty" responses seems pretty selective. But what the hell, I did like "rock star":

My Open Letter to the Democratic Leadership

Warning: the following message to the Democratic Party is going to have some harsh language in it. so if that sort of thing offends you, bail out now.

Today I read yet another story about how “Democratic Party insiders” fear that the Democrats are going to lose their majority in the U.S House and possibly even the Senate. The “insiders” and “strategists” requested anonymity so as to “speak candidly” about the prospects.

Well allow me to speak candidly as well to these anonymous officials of the party:

What the FUCK do you people think you’re doing?

You’re supposed to be helping the Democrats win in November, you assholes, not conceding the fucking game. The dumbest assistant coach of the most hapless junior college team in the NCAA knows better than to tell reporters “yeah, jeez, it looks pretty bad, I think we’re going to get our asses kicked this season.” If he did, he’d be out of a fucking job, and good riddance.

Here’s something even I know, Brainiacs: people vote for winners. If you talk like you’re a loser, people aren’t going to vote for you. They’re either going to stay home, or they’re going to vote for the other guys. You know, the guys who are strutting around talking about how they’re going to win. Either way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I’m no high ranking Democratic party strategist, but even I can figure that much out.

I’ve given my time and my money to this party, and I’ve written almost weekly in support of its candidates for over ten years now. Since I live in one of the most heavily conservative areas of a southern state, I take shit for it every day--including the occasional anonymous threat--from mouth breathing redneck assholes and cranky old racist teabaggers who treat me like something they scraped off their orthopedic shoes because I don’t think Sarah Palin is the Second Coming, with Tits. And you want to know what new and exciting flavor that shit’s being served in lately? “Even your own leadership thinks you’re losing in November. HAW HAW HAW!” Thanks a lot, you craven sons of bitches. Thanks just fucking LOADS.

I’m still fighting though. And I don’t even get paid a “political strategist’s” salary to do it. So why the hell are you pulling down hefty bucks to throw the game?

You know what, you chickenshit bastards? If you don't think the Democrats can hold a majority, then quit. Fucking leave. I mean it. Quit being a ‘high ranking Democratic strategist” and go buy a goat farm or write a novel or something. Put some people in charge of the party with some goddamn backbone and some will to win. Because for all the sports analogies, this isn’t a game. It’s the future of the country we all love. And you defeatist lackwits are about to let it fall back into the hands of the same people who ran it into the ditch.

You want any kind of meaningful reform to be stalled because some birther lunatic is tying up the Senate until Obama personally walks down to the Capitol and gives him a DNA sample to prove he’s human? Then keep talking. You want to see some right wing dingbat tie up the House for the next two years with investigations over how much the First Lady spent on her last pair of shoes?

You don’t? Then SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET BACK TO WORK.

Do your damn jobs, which do NOT include eroding the confidence in your own ranks and making the other guys look like the winners three months before the election.

If anyone who reads this knows any of these “insiders”, will you please pass this along to them? Maybe somehow, some way, one of them will get the message that we want leaders who’ll fight for the party and for the future of America.

I Am Losing Patience With These People

Democrats Privately Fear House Slipping Away

I'm reminded of a story told by Shelby Foote in Ken Burn's documentary on the Civil War, about U.S. Grant. Some of his junior officers were fretting about what a great General Robert E. Lee was, to which Grant responded: "I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at thesame time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do."

Will you people MAN UP, for Christ's sake?

Sane Conservatives, Redux

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I've occasionally been accused of being too hard on conservatives in this column. Some have even asserted that I hate conservatives. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Some of my best friends are conservatives.

What I’m against, and what I mock on a regular basis, are people who use the mantle of “conservatism” as a cover for meanness, selfishness and bigotry, people for whom so-called “conservatism” isn’t about what you believe, it’s about whom you hate. I actually go out of my way to look for reasonable, rational, non-insane conservatives. I’m pleased to say, the hunting has been pretty good recently.
One thing conservatives profess to love is the Constitution. Remember the brouhaha when Supreme Court nominee (now Justice) Elena Kagan quoted her mentor, Thurgood Marshall, in saying that the Constitution,
as originally drafted, was “defective” because it recognized and legitimized slavery? You’d have thought she’d advocated setting fire to the original ­document and replacing it with Mao’s Little Red Book.
Yes, some conservatives sure do love that Constitution — until its protections start being applied to someone who looks, prays, loves or think differently from them. Freedom of religion? Right to private property? Not for Muslims in Manhattan, bucko! Right to counsel? Shut up, you Islamofascist sympathizers, and bring on the waterboard!
A recent example of conservative disdain for the Constitution arose over the 14th Amendment’s definition of a citizen as anyone “born ornaturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

That really grinds some ­conservatives’ gears when it’s applied to the children of ­people here illegally. They really hate the idea of those rotten little brown “anchor babies” being citizens, to the point where some Republican senators have called for at least partially repealing the 14th Amendment.
That got to be too much for former CNN newsman Lou Dobbs. It would be hard to find someone more hard-line on illegal immigration than Dobbs, who’s characterized it as “an invasion.”

But he recently went on Fox and said: “The idea that anchor babiessomehow require changing the 14th amendment, I part ways with thesenators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly inits due process and equal protection clauses, is so important. It laysthe foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.”
Another conservative who suddenly managed to turn up sane was Ted Olson, former solicitor general under George W. Bush and no one’s definition of a bleeding heart liberal.
After a federal judge struck down California’s ban on same-sex marriage, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of the attorneyswho had argued the case for the plaintiffs was none other than Olson. He afterward went on “Fox News Sunday” and proceeded to calmly demolish Chris Wallace’s argument that the judge had created some kind of “new right” for gays and lesbians.

Olson pointed out that the right to marry a person of your choice has long been defined as a fundamental right, “part of liberty, privacy,association and spirituality guaranteed to each individual under the Constitution.” Pressed on the issue of so-called “judicial activism,” Olson responded that it’s a “judicial responsibility” to overturn laws that violate the Constitution, no matter how many people may have voted for them. “Would you want Fox News’ right to report be submitted to a vote?” he asked Wallace.

One conservative writer and blogger I read regularly is David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush and the author of several books on conservatism, including “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.” Frum recently responded to an editorial in The National Review condemning the falsely named “Ground Zero Mosque” by using the same sort of rigorous application of the Constitution that conservatives claim to be so fond of (but so rarely adhere to).

“I remain skeptical that the sponsors of this mosque are quite as benign as they have been represented,” he said,“... but the rights guaranteed by the Constitution do not belong only to nice people. And whatever we may wonder about the mosque promoters, we should also remember the mosque’s users: the thousands of Muslims who work in lower Manhattan, every single one of whom is as entitled to pray as any member of Marble Presbyterian or Temple Emanuel.”
Sane conservatives: They’re out there. They don’t get the same press coverage as the nutballs, birthers and death-panel fabulists do, and to tell you the truth, they’re not nearly as much fun to write about. But they’re willing to be fair, and so am I.
At least this week.