politics

Nevada is a battleground state, and the state elections have gotten nasty (on both sides); the mailers I get every day don’t even pretend to be about issues any more, they’re just attack ads. I got this one, against a Democratic candidate, a couple of days ago:

I thought the photo they chose to illustrate “radical groups” was interesting. There were no specifics about what type of “radical” groups, or what they are radical about. To me, this image seemed like it was supposed to bring up the threat of radical (angry) feminists, but I don’t know if that was the specific type of radical this was meant to evoke or if that’s just what it makes me think of.

Anyway, it might be useful for a discussion of political discourses (for instance, how groups selectively use words like “radical,” “progressive,” “traditional,” “regressive,” and so on to depict change as either good or threatening), as well as what types of political agendas even appearances have become associated with “radical” politics (for instance, a woman wearing multiple necklaces and dreadlocks symbolizes radicalism).

Apparently for the last several presidential elections 7-11 has had a “7-Election” marketing campaign, in which they offer blue and red coffee cups and customers “vote” by choosing one or the other. Here is a screenshot from the 7-Election 2008 website:

You can go to the website and see the “voting” results map (current as of this morning), which shows two states at 50/50 and every other state going for Obama:

If you go to the actual website, you can hover over each state and see what the % breakdown is.

Now, in and of itself, I just thought this was slightly interesting as an example of the commodification of political choice (“express your voting preference through a coffee cup!”), and I thought it could be used as an example of made-up statistics that are entirely meaningless. For instance, at the 7-11 near my house, I noticed they only have blue cups available, so it would be impossible to “vote” for McCain. Anyone with just some basic common sense could think of tons of problems with this as a real methodology–it didn’t even really seem worth my time to go into much detail about why a poll based on sale of coffee cups is unscientific and stupid.

But then I noticed something on the website: according to the website, results are reported weekly in USA Today (although I wasn’t able to find links to any weekly reports, which seemed odd). I know USA Today isn’t considered a high-quality newspaper by a lot of people, but still, it’s at least ostensibly reporting news. The 7-Election website also has a link to CNN, so perhaps they are partnering with them, too. Editor & Publisher ran a story on it. The results of a marketing scheme to sell coffee is being treated as news. I’m going to try to use it in class to discuss how things get defined as “newsworthy,” and who sets the agenda for what we’re going to talk about. Here we have a company getting free publicity for its marketing promotion because that marketing promotion has been declared “news.” What important information about the world is being ignored in favor of this? How does treating this as newsworthy legitimize it, as though these statistics are meaningful or accurate? Does that increase sales for 7-11?

I found a lot of comments on blogs where people claimed that after hearing about this campaign, they went out and bought coffee just to “vote” for their preferred candidate, and a few who said they refused to buy coffee because the store was out of the cups they wanted. I find this entire thing incredibly bizarre, and I don’t see why news outlets and individuals are buying into the idea that this is anything other than a way to convince more people to buy 7-11 coffee.

NEW!  In our comments, Penny pointed out that Baskin Robbins does the same thing.  Here are the results from this suspicously delicious poll as of the morning of Nov. 4th:

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.

Last week, John Kerry made a joke about John McCain’s age, implying that he wears Depends (that is, adult diapers). I have searched everywhere and haven’t been able to find any video of Kerry telling the joke; all the discussions I’ve been able to find of it seem to lead back to an original story at PolitickerMA.com. It brought up something that has bugged me throughout this campaign: the cheap shots about McCain’s age. For example (thanks to Burk for finding me all these images):

Found here.

Found here.

The Baltimore Sun posted this photo and asked readers to provide captions for it:

Suggested captions included jabs about Ensure, reaching out to senior citizens, nursing homes, forgetfulness, and so on.

While I’ve heard a lot of people talking about racism in depictions of Barack Obama, and sexism in portrayals of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, I have heard very few people discuss the very negative depictions of the the “old” being used to ridicule McCain. Depictions of older people range from out-of-touch, doddering fools to crazed racists to pathetic invalids. Although Kerry’s joke drew some criticism, jokes or comments about McCain’s age have generally been given a pass–they’ve been declared fair game. You might get in trouble in our culture for being sexist or racist, but apparently ridiculing people for being old is fine.

I don’t know about you, but I know some old people, and they are healthy, coherent, mentally competent people who appear to have complete control of their bladders and bowels. My grandmother is 70 and runs a 110-cow ranch on her own in Oklahoma, doing all of the labor herself (except that she hires someone to come in and bale the hay each year). Just as I thought it must be awful to be an Arab American and hear accusations that Obama is secretly Arab or Muslim used as a slur against him, I’ve wondered how my grandma feels, hearing McCain’s age ridiculed. My guess is that she finds it mortifying, but I haven’t gotten up the courage to ask.

I have also on more than one occasion heard people mock John McCain’s physical appearance, particularly the fact that one side of his face is swollen because he had a patch of skin removed due to skin cancer. The times I overheard this, they weren’t expressing concern that he might have a serious form of cancer that could kill him or force him to leave office; they were just laughing at how he looked.

If McCain showed evidence of dementia or osteoporosis or some other condition that you could maybe directly relate to his age, then ok, fine, I could see people commenting on it. But that’s not what’s going on here. This is just making fun of his age for the sake of it–it’s funny that he’s old, because old people are laughable. It’s an interesting statement about the value we place on older people in this culture.

Breck C. sent in a video of the original “Wassup” Budweiser ad. What strikes me about the commercial is the portrayal of male friendship: men don’t actually talk meaningfully, they just mention sports and yell catchphrases at each other. Yet this is associated with “true” friendship (as is Budweiser).

After watching it, I was trying to decide to what degree I thought race was an important factor in the commercial–were viewers likely to read this as how Black men interact, specifically, or just what men are like, more generally? African Americans are sometimes stereotyped as loud and more boisterously expressive than other groups, but lots of commercials portray men in general as sort of loud idiots (or children or animals) of some type or another.

I looked for some more “Wassup” commercials and came upon this one:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDTZCgsZGeA[/youtube]

The only male shown being annoyed by the screaming–and not part of the friendship group–is the White guy at the end. I got the impression that he’s used to hearing it from them, so presumably he could have learned to like it as much as they have.

Both Breck C. and Burk sent in this update of the video, made by an independent director with all the original “Wassup” actors (and not in any way related to the Budweiser company):

Apparently this commercial became sufficiently imprinted in the public consciousness that it occurred to someone to update it as a political ad, assuming people would still remember and feel affection for the catchphrase and the characters. I had no idea.

Thanks, Breck and Burk!

Gwen Sharp is an associate professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter at @gwensharpnv.

Data from the Pew Research Foundation, via Andrew Sullivan.

The trivialization of domestic violence + Obama is going to destroy America + the stereotype of black men as violent.  Sigh.  Buy it here.

Thanks to Tim C. for the tip!

In this McCain-Palin ad which, I believe, started running yesterday, it is stated that an Obama presidency will bring on international military conflict (at least that’s my reading of the images), while a McCain presidency means no international military conflict.

Sociologically what is interesting about this ad is the way in which danger can be socially constructed. What we fear most is not necessarily what is most likely to cause us harm. Consider, most of us are more afraid of riding in hot air balloons than cars but, even proportionally, your chances of dying in a hot air balloon crash are much smaller than your chances of dying in a car crash. People around us–e.g., our parents and friends, but also politicians–try to shape the degree of fear we have for any given situation. Politicans, especially, are not necessarily doing it out of a concern for our well-being.

What do we really need to fear in the next four years? This McCain ad nicely tries to draw our attention away from the fear of, say an economic depression or climate change, in favor of an international military conflict. Though he doesn’t say so explicitly, it seems obvious to me that he’s implying a terrorist attack. It’s not obvious to me, though, that a military conflict or terrorist attack is more likely to cause extreme and extended suffering than any other potential crisis, but it would useful to McCain if I thought so, because it’s the one sphere in which it is widely agreed that McCain is superior to Obama. Thus, as an extremely powerful figure, he attempts to shape our collective understanding of what is (most) dangerous, what we should (most) fear, and win the presidency through the cultivation of a culture of fear.