Eight-year-olds with million-dollar warchests

[jducoeur]

You know the Body Politic has slipped a disc when the best metaphor you can come up with is bratty schoolchildren. I mean, here's a concise summary of the New Hampshire Senatorial Election (As Seen On TV (tm)):

"Mooom! Jeanne's been hanging out with Providian! Make her stop!"
"Mooom! John's stealing cookies from the house and giving them to Providian!"
"Jeanne and Providian, sitting in a tree, K - I - S - S - I - N - G..."
"Mooom! John's been helping Providian and his friends sneak out of the house!"

I think that's the complete semantic content of the TV ads that we've been barraged with. Okay, yes -- politics is a nasty business. But can't these two find something to talk about other than the schoolyard bully?

(And it's not as if I can even vote in the election, being over the border in Massachusetts. Now that they've managed to outlaw secondhand smoke, I think the time has come to do something about secondhand election campaigns...)

-- Justin

     - Never, ever, stop for a pedestrian unless he flings himself
under the wheels of your car.
     - The first parking space you see will be the last parking space
you see.  Grab it.
     - Learn to swerve abruptly.  Boston is the home of slalom driving,
thanks to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which puts potholes in key
locations to test drivers' reflexes and keep them on their toes.
		-- From "Basic rules for driving in Boston"
		   by JBOLOGNA@bentley.bitnet

Comments

[tpau]

ads? you watch ads? why? :)

-TPau, who ahsn't seen a comercial since february8th, the day the TiVo arrived :)

[jducoeur]

Caitlin and I still have terrible packrat tendencies -- TiVo is really cool, but inherently kinda limited compared to our 1000+ videotapes.

(Yes, it's irrational: we only really rewatch a modest fraction of those tapes. Problem is, we often don't know which ones we care about until years later. And you can't loan a TiVo to a friend who missed recording a show -- at least, not until the network connections are really ready for primetime...)

And really, most of the annoying ads aren't during stuff we record, anyway. It's the evening news that's really dreadful. I think that they presume that people are primed to be scared when they're watching the news, so they pull out all the worst "Oooh -- surely you don't want to elect the nasty boogeyman?" tactics during it. As confirmed news addicts, we wind up getting a lot of this...

-- Justin

"Gestation's a bitch, and then you're born."
-- Da Roach

[tpau]

we jsut record onto tapes form the Tivo without the commercials. it's fun. of course i also get all my news online, so i miss all the news-time ads as well. probably a good thing, overall.