Branding Sold America on Obama like a Can of Soda
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Barack Obama "Hope" poster (edited) originally by Shepard Fairey. The poster represents one of the ways Obama was branded and his image sold to the electorate.
This is the kind of man perfectly ready to be turned into a brand, made into a symbol, an idol and an icon. But brands tell us more about how their creators see us, than how we see them. The brand is a ‘wire mother’, a collection of symbols that are meant to draw forth emotional reactions from us and create an attachment to inanimate objects. The brand manipulates our ideas of who we are and want to be in order to incorporate itself into our self-image, to be the parasite in our worldview. To identify the brand as aspirational and link it to our own aspirations.
The idea that an election would cease to be about issues and become entirely an exercise in selling a product, sight unseen, the proverbial pig in a poke covered over with the symbols of capitalism might have seemed unduly alarmist once, but 2008 was our pig in a poke election. A man who had virtually no experience in national government was elevated to the highest office in the land because a fortune was spent on making voters feel good about voting for him. Not based on the issues, but based entirely on externals.
Obama did not have an aspirational candidacy, he had an aspirational brand. A brand that people wanted to be a part of, because it made them feel good about themselves. And so we learned that there is indeed something worse than Bread and Circuses. An electorate that votes on that is at least somewhat capable of using self-interest to make judgments, but one that votes for the brand that feels good has abandoned even the vestiges of reason and self-interest. Such people are no longer exercising their power over government, instead they have become customers, buying a product that they have no say in how it gets made or what goes in there. Not because they need it, but because they have been programmed to feel good when buying it.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli born blogger and columnist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His work covers American, European and Israeli politics as well as the War on Terror. His writing can be found at http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/. The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of The Jewish Press.
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Why Barack Obama Does What He Does
by Josh Greenberger
(September 6, 2012) A Barack Obama “report card” has been circulating that faults Obama for many issues. But those accusations are a bit shortsighted. The following list gives some insight into the rationale behind some of those issues.
* Obama is the first President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000 a year at taxpayer expense.
– This was money well-spent. The dog trainer has trained Obama’s dog how to blame Bush’s dog for every mess on the front lawn.
* Obama is the first President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and later admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.
– This is Bush’s fault. Bush never got the shovels ready.
* Obama is the first President to go on multiple global apology tours.
– There’s a strategy behind this. The last thing we want is for people who hate us to think we’re uncomfortable with this.
* Obama is the first President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.
– Obama doesn’t read what he signs when he is present, so how’s this a problem?
* Obama is the first President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.
– This was actually an excellent move. Elected officials promise the world and deliver nothing. Czars promise nothing — and deliver what they promise.
* Obama is the first President to hide his educational records.
– If Obama has no idea what he’s doing now, how would it help us if we found out he had no idea what he was doing in school?
* Obama is the first President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.
– Obama has every right to take some time out to relax. He’s under a lot of pressure to come up with creative ways to blame Bush for everything from the economy to unemployment to high-intensity sun spots. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
* Obama is the first President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.
– You can hardly blame him for this. If we started deporting all undesirables, Obama would be left with no Czars.
* Obama is the first President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in.
– This is so his poverty-stricken brother in Kenya can’t find him and ask for stimulus money. Why spend money on food and better living conditions for a brother who can’t vote in the U.S. when the money can be better spent on showing great “compassion” for Mexicans who are in the U.S. illegally?
* Obama is the first President to violate the War Powers Act.
– Since when do you need Congress’ approval to declare war on your own people?
* Obama is the first President to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space.
– With the trillions of stimulus dollars Obama spent on projects that bore no fruit, the last thing he needed was a successful project to kill his momentum.
* Obama is the first President to abrogate bankruptcy laws to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.
– This is the people’s fault. 2008 is the first time the people completely abrogated common sense to elect a president with a total bankruptcy of moral character.
So, if you voted for Barack Obama in 2008, you must be really proud that you’re “not a racist” and his election “made history.”
Considering that Obama did more damage — certainly from the economic standpoint — to this country in four years than any other president in history, yes, his election certainly made history.
As far as racism is concerned: Voting for a qualified candidate regardless of the color of his skin would make you a non-racist. But voting for an unqualified candidate for no other reason than the color of his skin — regardless of what that color is — is as racist as it gets.
by Josh Greenberger