Special: Politics!

Let's do some word association. What pops into your head when you think of political ads? "Sleazy"? "Dishonest"? "Fucking irritating"? For me, it's "primitive". Let me explain in excessive detail. Regular ads, the ones that want to sell you things instead of people, don't take three out of four years off. Regular ads are locked in a constant Darwinian struggle for airtime, mindshare, and profitability. One of their main limiting factors is consumer sophistication. Jadedness begins early, as the Awesome! and Amazing! toys you're sold as a child break down and/or put out your eye. As you age, the promises they make have to keep just slightly ahead of your disillusionment, or they'll go broke. Animated ads in which cartoon space beavers shoot germs and sing give way to appeals to 9 out of 10 dentists' authority, which in turn give way to Powers of Ten-style extreme close-ups of CGI microbes. So in this climate, where every commercial is a whizzing, buzzing, perfectly-honed marketing (and killing) machine, it's quite offputting to see a political ad lumber up to your screen, toss back its brow and grunt "GROG OPPONENT UGLY. NOT GOOD LEADER. GROG APPROVE MESSAGE." Political ads often use a technique that's been abandoned long ago by normal ads: the direct appeal. Regular ads would never say something so gauche as the word BUY, but political ads will constantly exhort you to VOTE for their guy. Regular ads have all the time in the world (or at least in the quarter), so they can get away with just giving you a feeling, an impression, a memorable 30-second movie that you can associate with their product. They can afford to depend on mere exposure. Political ads are on a budget and a schedule, and they can't afford for you to only remember that Joe Biden smokes black tar heroin, or that Sarah Palin murders political opponents, when you're waiting in line at the Target. They need enough people to perform a specific task at a specific time or all of the balloons they inflated and put in a big net will have been for naught. As such, every political ad smacks of desperation, fear, and urgency. Now, this go-around, Barack Obama has enough money to have his opponent fired into the sun, as well as innumerable artists and slick graphic designers with hairstyles who will work for him for nothing. His ads have been effortlessly laid-back, much like, if you'll excuse a bit of racism, the Harlem Globetrotters. All John McCain has is a guy who's won elections before. His ads use the familiar tactic of fear-mongering and implicit accusations of pedophilia and terrorism. You're probably familiar with how that's going, but for posterity: It's not going well. Who will win? Oh, it's exciting! Like the ending of a romantic comedy! Will she end up with the boring, stodgy guy she's known for years--or the new and thrilling guy who happened to get top billing despite not appearing until the middle of the second act! It's totally unpredictable! Seriously, though, Obama's got like a lot more money.