Thursday, March 20, 2008

Today's Video Link

Here's a commercial for Clark's Teaberry Gum that a lot of us enjoyed when it aired incessantly on TV back in the sixties. By that, I mean we enjoyed the commercial. What I don't recall is any of my friends, who chewed a lot of gum, chewing this one. What I do recall though is an advertising expert on some PBS show saying that insofar as selling the product was concerned, it was a terrible commercial. Why? Because it didn't convey any message about buying Clark's Teaberry Gum. Didn't tell you what it was, even. And in a way, he's right. I still don't know what flavor one might expect from such a thing or why I might enjoy it.

The expert said, approximately, "Even then, a commercial could succeed if it embeds the name of the product into your brain and causes you, when you see it at the store, to think, 'Oh, that's the product I've heard so much about.' But this commercial doesn't even achieve that because the name is such an offhand, afterthought part of it. I'll bet this spot sold more Herb Alpert records than gum." He may have been right...but isn't it a great commercial?

• Posted at 8:53 AM · LINK

Today's Political Thought

Last evening in rush hour traffic, I drove down Ventura Boulevard at about four miles an hour. That's low even for Ventura at that time of day where you can usually average five. One of the reasons for the slowdown was that there were two demonstrations going on a few miles apart — one in favor of a U.S. pullout of Iraq, one against. Since my car was moving at about the speed of Tim Conway's old man character, I had plenty of time to inspect the signs carried by each group.

The "get out of Iraq" folks all had signs that said what we could be spending the money on instead: "Better education instead of war," "Cleaner water instead of war," "Fix our streets instead of war" and so forth. Those are all commendable preferences but I don't think they're a particularly strong argument. The two main cases against the war in Iraq are that an awful lot of people are dying or being maimed, and that the war seems to be accomplishing the opposite of making this a safer world for us. I don't know why but it felt to me like the protest was almost trivializing the human cost by making it sound like if we weren't in Iraq, we'd be spending all that money on schools and roads. I kinda doubt that we would.

The arguments on the signs wielded by the "stay the course" people seemed even weaker to me. Every one I saw said either "Surrender is not an option" or "The surge is working." I'm not sure that us pulling out of that mess over there would actually constitute surrender...but whatever it would be should always be an option, especially when the other option seems to be staying there forever without a way out. I could buy (but have yet to hear) a strong argument that the U.S. is actually achieving its goals, or even that it stands a reasonable chance of achieving its goals. That would mean though that someone had to articulate those goals and not, when they begin seeming more remote, forget them and make up new ones.

As for "The surge is working," same difference. Working to what ends? The way some politicians use that phrase, it sounds like they admit we're stuck there with no exit strategy and no achievable worthy goal...but the death tolls have slowed, so that means less domestic embarrassment for those who got us into this war. The way William Kristol uses those four words, it sounds like that's all they mean. Or care about.

• Posted at 8:29 AM · LINK