Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Whew...

I am obviously biased. I'm going to give you the following from my point of view. I can't give it to you from any other point of view (and you wouldn't be here if that didn't interest you in some way or another).

I watched both of the speeches. They were both essentially laundry lists of memes that have proven effective on the campaign trail that have resonated with the people. That's pretty much why you have the primary system it forces everyone to accumulate the ideas that the whole party finds important. Every candidate (even the republicans) has contributed to this aggregate of ideas.

But, the most powerful idea is the idea of change. We all know who gave birth to that meme. It's the ideological singularity of the entire election.

Many of the candidates have good ideas that's why they get assimilated readily, Barack's ideas don't get assimilated they assimilate other candidate's entire campaigns.

But back to the speeches.

Hillary's speech was made in an entirely different mode than her other speeches. She was forced to adopt a whole new style. That's what I remember, nothing specific. The meme birthed by her speech was "Hillary changed". That doesn't connect with me, it doesn't draw me in and make me think that she is going to turn things around.

Barack's speech was typical for him. I don't remember much of it either, but he co-opted and re-branded a GIANT meme. Yes We Can. Evokes images of Rosie the Riveter. You know, WWII and the empowerment of women. Not insignificant things in the mental history of the United States. That bagged me like Paula Patton posing as vice cop in a hooker sting outside of a Viagra study.

Shit yeah. We can do it. I'm sick of us not doing it. We can put our hands on the wheel and avoid the crash or just sit back and assume the airbags are working.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

"like Paula Patton posing as vice cop in a hooker sting outside of a Viagra study"

Wow....just...wow...

Muze said...

^^ that line had me cracking up too. lol.

as you know, i agree with you. hillary doesn't move me. and now that she sees that her tears actually helped her, she is going to do it more. hopefully not, but women are programmed to take advantage of their on-cue emotions when it benefits them.

barack's speech was typical of him, but typical of him is moving, exciting and inspiring. and even if he can't deliver on everything he says he is going to do, i believe that he will be the one to make the most effort in following through. that hillary and bj bill are shady to me now. boooo.

yes we can!