As of this morning, Joe the Plumber is a brand as well as a household name. The McCain-Palin campaign has sent the word via email to supporters and undecideds that they will be accepting 30-second video ads from all the disgruntled Joe Plumbers out there through Friday the 24th at 5 p.m.The prize will be a featured spot in a McCain TV ad.
It seems that since McCain has not been nearly as successful as Obama at commodifying his own brand, he is now taking the tack of commodifying his supporters. He may well be on to something. The only thing Americans love more than buying stuff is selling themselves, seems to be McCain's way of thinking, and he has years of American Idol and YouTube to back him up.
His call to the masses to don the Joe mantle plumbs (sorry) new depths in his particular brand of cynical populism. By fetishizing working class signifiers ("Joe," generic t-shirt style retro graphics, the appeal to self-projecting couch potatoes), McCain is continuing his galling disingenuousness, stringing along and bribing Main Street to vote back in a structure that will benefit the Wall Streeters and the gated-in denizens of Vista Drive at Main Street's expense.
It will be interesting, in any case, to see the outcome. But this may be too little too late as McCain's major foray into Internet interactivity; the whole enterprise has the stodgy reek of the old "Can you draw?" ads printed in the back of comic books:
At least let's hope this doesn't usher in a national shaved-head craze. The Palin look-alikes are crowding YouTube as it is.
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Comments
I LOVED the pun by the way!
Great post Marco!!
Um....no comment on the "shaved head craze".
:-D
I have a three-syllable word that most aptly describes, I think, the McCain campaign strategy:
Dumbasses
Party on, people. Rated/appreciated.
Mary, Lisa: it occurs to me that this is actually a casting call for the original Joe's replacement, since he's outlived his usefulness. The McCain campaign has essentially created a stock character, a mascot, as we call them in the branding world, to embody the message, kind of like the Aflac duck or the Geico Cavemen. And every once in a while you have to refresh the mascot. So ultimately the particulars of the next Joe or Jo won't matter. It's all about the slogan and the character, not reality. What's scary is that they have already tested this principle with their Veep candidate.
artsfish, JRDOG, Gary, Bill: somehow I can never bring myself to underestimate the impact of McCain's gambits. They are all hail mary passes to an extent, but there are wild and wooly sectors in America, and so far the results of their experiments have been hair-raising to say the least.
By the way, I don't understand that crack about the art school ads. I picked up my certificate there when I dabbled in cartooning before I explored water management.
Leave it to those rubes to champion a guy who they know damn well would be voting for Obama if he were smart enough to learn the facts.
This could very well backfire. Big time.
I think that part of America-the large part that is hurting, likes to see politicians bow down and kiss their feet. Somehow - they were groomed for this - it validates their toil for the machine that now fakes its loyalty to the population that ensures its survival.
Mere pawns, aspiring to positions of and desperately grasping for power within the far right's despicable bid for power. John has been a tool for some time - like Lou Dobbs - but he now has lowered himself in order to help retain the power his overlords clearly never deserved. Say it ain't so, John!?
Carl Rove and his ilk, have highjacked McCain's maverick-ness (see You Me and Dupree). Going along with this strategy has, I think, cost John McCain his legacy - at least for those who are paying attenting. Wolverine is too good for John - I like Wolverine. I used to just not like John so much, and dismissed him as an irritating, rambunctious school girl, pining for attention and a lollypop every time he did something right, just because he was in the wrong party like me.
Then I decided to separate the fact from the fiction he was peddling. What was more important, I used to respect him. Now everything I respected him for... has lost its significance; I don't trust him. John is a nutrea, or even a weasel. More than a war-mongering, hate-inspiring jackass, I want and need my President to be principled and STAND for something.
As recent 'errors' in judgement (aka choices) have shown, how can I think that can I trust John McCain NOT to fall for anything, as long as it's convenient?
Putting Joe the Plumber in the spotlight is just another indication of how out of touch (with reality) the McCain campaign is. Do they not know the average income in the USA?
Obama-Biden '08! Yes We Can & Yes We Will!! Vote early, if you can. Make history!!
Didn't the Boxer profile ("If you can draw this...) in the matchbooks outlast the broad in the comic books?
Madison Ave. has made us just too darn sofisticacted.