Putting Your Worst Face Forward
A lot of people are pointing this out recently: On McCain’s web site, “Golf Gear” is given just slightly less priority than Iraq. Now, we know the man is desperate for funds, but how much can he make off selling McCain-branded stuff at the cost of a presidential appearance? Both candidates sport links to stores which sell their stuff, but this looks more like some commercial promotion beyond pins, T-shirts, and bumper stickers. But that’s all within the store, not promoted noticeably on the candidate’s main page just above a prominent photo. Not to mention that the stores are less about money-making than they are about advertising, and you won’t advertise very well by having rich folks carrying around your stuff on isolated golf courses.
That leads to another mystery in regards to the gold gear: golf? I mean, nothing says “old rich white guy” quite like golf does. Selling sports gear in general including golf stuff would have been better–a more widespread and even youthful appeal–but why focus on golf so prominently? Are they trying to invite comments about his age? Not to mention that Obama proudly displays the fact that his store’s stuff is made in the US by union labor. McCain, who proudly boats how much he loves NAFTA, has no indication of where his gear was made. China, probably.
And the kicker: McCain hates golf.
On another note, what the hell was with McCain and that speech? Forget the Obama with 32,000 while McCain had a few hundred; forget the lime-green backdrop. What was with that demented laugh and smile?
Ouch. Keep that stuff up, McCain.
What I really like is the total ripoff of Obama’s slogan (“*** We Can Believe In”) and now they’re ripping off the look and feel of the art of the campaign, too.
Amazing. I would say that they must think the voters have the IQs of turtles, but then again, the voters did go for W in big numbers a couple of times. Sigh.
The frustrating thing is, there’s a double-standard. Very much like the “if Clinton had done this” standard where Dubya could do crap without consequence where Clinton would have been reamed in the media, McCain can do stuff without much media stir that would cause an immediate hurricane in the media were Obama the one to do it. As much as the media went negative on McCain’s speech performance, had it been Obama, we’d be hearing about it for weeks; were Obama to steal from McCain’s campaign like you note McCain steals from Obama’s, it’d be a piece the news sources would pick up and run with. Were Obama to be as steeped in lobbyists as McCain, the media would have picked up on this long ago and everyone would be aware; with McCain, most people still don’t know. And the media never even hiccuped when McCain brazenly violated federal campaign finance law, even when the Republican head of the FEC said McCain was in the wrong–had Obama done that, it would have been a huge news story.