Matt S. sent in a link to a global electoral map showing how the world would vote in the U.S. presidential election. The images below–the first from The Economist and the second from two guys in Iceland–might be useful for illustrating the relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Thanks Matt!

Adriana E. sent in this video made by The Human Rights Action Center, featuring Tila Tequila, designed to inspire opposition to human rights abuses in Burma.  Like other organizations, such as PETA (see here and here), this PSA uses sex appeal to inspire activist outrage. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK8inPfHg_0[/youtube]

Ironically, as Adriana notes, Tila Tequila is famous for being bisexual, but really only interacts suggestively in this video with the boys.  I guess hypersexualizing a woman is all fine and good, but bisexuality would be a real turn off.

Do any of you think that this is effective in inspiring concern for Burma?

As Mary K. says:

…I doubt if war is a bore for those who are fighting it, those being fought against, or those on either side who’s loved ones are concerned about their safety.

The bag is for sale at Forever 21.

Thanks to Mary for the submission and to her friend, Steph, for modeling!

In U.S. culture, the stereotype of Black women includes being too loud, aggressive, etc (i.e., masculine).  Thus, to fit into the role of first lady, according to Reuters, Michelle Obama must “soften” herself.  Note that the text accompanying this headline emphasizes that she’s just going to be a mom.

In contrast, Cindy McCain already “fits” “with her elegant clothes and pefectly coiffed blond hair.”

Click on either image to enlarge.  Full articles can be found here and here. Via Jezebel.

See also this post where Michelle Obama is called an “angry black woman.”

In her book, The Averaged Americans, Sarah Igo talks about the development of statistical methods.  Their development allowed for the emergence of the idea of an “average American.”  An idea that carried moral weight; “average” was “good.” 

Looking at the famous “Middletown” study, the Kinsey Reports, and the invention of polling, she discusses how methods aimed at identifying the average Amerian often reproduced preconceived notions of who was a real American.  In the Middletown study, Blacks were ignored because the researchers decided they didn’t count as average Americans.  Similarly, polling methodology is aimed at getting a representative sample, but representative of who?  Deciding who is being over- or under-represented in a sampling strategy is always a choice.

The invention of the “average American” as an idea is interesting in light of the McCain/Palin rhetoric about “main street” and “real America” and the way in which being a “typical” American is being framed as morally good (image from Stuff White People Do)

. 

As with Middletown, the idea of the average American used by McCain/Palin is still racially-coded.  We Are Respectable Negroes lists 69 terms–including “regular folks,” “responsible Americans,” and “good hard-working people”–used by speakers in this election to mean middle-class white person.  Here are Palin’s words:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vob9vFvojN8[/youtube]

Which brings me to Joe the Plumber.  Joe the Plumber, of course, is supposed to represent an “average” American.  But every in-group needs an out-group and, like all incarnations of the average, Joe has to be differentiated from the extremes, the non-average, the tails of the distribution: the blacks, the traitors, the poor, the Muslims, etc.  Here he is making exactly such an argument about Obama:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw2Wczp9yOc[/youtube]

Indeed, convincing us that Obama is Other has been a central part of the McCain/Palin strategy (see here, here, a here, a here, here, here, here).

Nadya at Coilhouse sent in this ad campaign for Kiwi Kleen Toilet Cleaner.  In order to disgust you, the ads suggest that sharing a toilet seat is like sitting directly on someone else’s ass and, to disgust you further, they suggest that that someone else could be a Mexican wrestler, a fat pig, and a transsexual.  Keep it classy, Kiwi Kleen.  (Images found at Coilhouse and Coloribus.)

Hello Readers! 

Please enjoy this collection of posts that we’ve enhanced while you’ve been busy reading our new stuff and, um, all the election coverage you can stomach.  There will be more new material in our Special Election Round-Up!  Look for it on the morning of Nov. 4th.  But for now, click on these links and look for the bright red NEW!

Tini Puppini is a hyper-sexualized fake pet dog that combines sexualization with anthropomorphization in a super creepy way.  Just scroll past the sexualized equines in this post to the sexualized canines. It’s weird, I promise.

Single? Are the odds in your favor? We can tell you. We’d put up a map showing where single men outnumber single women and vice versa. And now we’ve added a link to an interactive map where you can choose particular age ranges and a screen shot of the map for the 30-45 and the 50-65 range.

Promoting smoking with doctors and Santa Claus? Oh yes! See some more vintage cigarette ads here.

miz_geek, in the comments to this post, pointed us to a commercial for Korean Air with truly blatant ejaculation imagery. Watch it here in our post where we collect, um, ejaculation imagery (scroll to the bottom).

Commenters Eoin and T.B. pointed us to another World War II carpool propaganda poster. 

In a hospital waiting room, we saw another sign instructing employees to do emotion work.  We added the images and further discussion on the topic to this post.

We added another instance of the use of the government-invented term “Hispanic.” This time it involves peanuts!

By “traditional marriage” do you mean polygamy?  We added two more examples of the satirical treatment of the traditional marriage.  The satiricist makes a pro-gay marriage argument by pointing to the trouble with the idea of “tradition.”

Scott W. sent us a great example of the use of the implicit promise of sex with a hot chick to sell, um, condominiums.  We added it to our post along that theme.

Our post featuring the sexualization of food is getting ridiculously extensive.  But when Denia sent us in a picture of hotdogs that said “Undress me,” we couldn’t resist adding them.  Click here and scroll all the way down.

NEW SAMPLE ASSIGNMENT

Karryn Lintelman generously allowed us to reproduce her assignment, The Rhetoric of Pop Culture, using Sociological Images and other resources.  Check it out here.

Elizabeth Dole (R) is running for Senate against Kay Hagen (D) in North Carolina. In the campaign ad below, Dole’s argument against electing Hagen is that she is supported by “Godless Americans” who believe in the separation of church and state. It is a nice example of the demonization of athiests (which, as we have seen, exceeds even the demonization of Muslims these days). (If the video doesn’t embed, click here.)

Found at The Daily Dish.