The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Super Ads

I am not a huge NFL fan but I never miss the Super Bowl because it has also become the show place for America’s advertising giants. The Super Bowl ads have come to be a competition in themselves and are often better than the game. At a reported cost of over $3 million for a thirty second ad it would be hard for me to imagine that any of the ads are cost effective but it’s not my money so roll the tape!  The ads on this year’s broadcast ran the gamut from great to banal to shockingly bad to scary and a few hit out and out stupid.

Once again this year the people who run “Go Daddy” got their pole dancing girl friends a gig on national TV.  I am beginning to think that GoDaddy.com’s ad agency is run by Larry Flynt. Their banned “Lola” ad about an NFL player who comes out of the closet to design ladies lingerie was on the level of a bad SNL skit, like there is any other kind. They weren’t the only advertiser to get in on the sophomoric heavy sexual overtones bandwagon. Monster.com’s ad entitled “Beavers” was perhaps the most shockingly bad outing of the evening. It ends with some inferred bestiality. Hey, it’s a “beaver,” get it. Ha-ha he said, “Beaver!” Cut to people who are unemployed and using Monster to search for a job rolling on the ground laughing hysterically. Maybe that’s why they are unemployed. Why do these two web firms continue to run this type of advertising? Maybe they have research that shows only mouth breathing troglodytes use their websites. Maybe all tech firms are run by really nerdy guys who have never lost their virginity. I am at a loss to explain this advertising trend.

Bud Light’s corporate image of the American male is almost as low as the tech world’s view of woman. Guys are beer swilling lay-abouts who will do just about anything to down a few Bud’s. If their ads were even close to being funny I could let it go for the joke but they were not. Thanks for that uplifting picture of male behavior.

E Trade has been running its campaign of computer enhanced talking baby ads for a few years now and they had a couple of cute ads especially one where a boy baby was talking on a video link to his girl baby friend. The whole concept is getting a little predictable although it still has a high “cute” factor. Still, I don’t know how many multimillion dollar investors move their accounts to E Trade because of the funny “milk-a-holic” line.

Judging from some ads there are either a lot of advertisers who don’t want conservatives to buy their products or a lot of liberals making television advertisements. When Audi’s “Green Police” ad showing government environmental cops arresting people for violating the planet first came on I thought it was a PSA for the Obama administration EPA policies. It wasn’t. Seems as long as you are driving an Audi diesel you are on the right side of the environmental fascists, for now!  

Qualcomm, trying to sell America the Flo personal TV, has combined leftist ideology and male bashing in its two ads featuring a guy who is “spineless” and a heavily political video montage by Obama idolater Will.i.am. I guess his stage name is supposed to be clever but it makes me think he was just raised on a little too much Dr. Seuss.  Can you imagine the flack a company would get if it let Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck produce a video montage for it’s Super Bowl commercial?

The best single ad was a promo for “The Late Show with David Letterman.” Building on another ad Dave had done with Oprah Winfrey the ad opens with Dave complaining that he is at the worst Super Bowl party ever. The camera pulls back to reveal Oprah sitting next to him trying to sooth his feeling and then pans to show Jay Leno sitting next to Oprah. Jay says’ “He’s just saying that ‘cause I’m here.”  Then Dave mocks Jay’s reply and an exasperated Oprah throws her hands in the air! Hilarious! It shows that above all Jay and Dave are comics who put the funny about personal differences and even their own shows!

I loved the Abe Vigoda/Betty White spot for Snickers but my award for the best corporate spots goes to Doritos. For the past several years the folks at Doritos have not hired a big dollar ad firm but have run a national video competition which has produced a steady stream of funny innovative commercials. By unleashed the unfettered creative power of 300 million Americans to get their Super Bowl ads the Frito-Lay Corporation has been one of the top rated Super Bowl advertisers and has richly rewarded those willing to do the work. Perhaps the Obama Administration should take notice.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Stewart and O’Reilly

 

When I heard that Jon Stewart was going to sit down for an interview with Bill O’Reilly I had to tune in. As a comic I have a great respect for Stewart. We couldn’t be further apart on a number of political issues but along with Lewis Black and Will Durst he is a left wing comic who isn’t afraid to skewer his own side when it needs it. He’s not exactly an equal opportunity mocker but at least he is willing to admit his side has a few dunderheads too. He cut his comedy teeth on the club circuit and has great writing and performance chops.

Bill O’Reilly is a sharp interviewer and most of the times willing to ask the tough questions and not worry if the guest will be coming back. I think it will be a long time until President Obama has the cajones for a round two with Mr. O’Reilly. John McCain didn’t even have the spine for round one. It is also obvious that Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Stewart have a mutual respect and a good relationship. I think a few times during the interview it kept Mr. O’Reilly from following up with Stewart and let his lay down a few years of liberal rubber in the “no spin zone.”  At times it seemed more Leno Show that news interview. When Stewart accused Fox News of  being a “cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week…” it didn’t seem that O’Reilly his new buddy Glenn Beck’s back as much as I would have liked him to, but hey that’s just me. That is my only criticism of this otherwise funny and enjoyable two day interview. It was excellent television.

I give Mr. O’Reilly full marks for the show! It’s tough to do a serious interview with a comedian. If you ask him a question and he doesn’t want to answer he always has the option of going for the joke. Stewart did this a number of times which has a way of putting even the best interviewer off the track. The “comic option” also allows a comedian being interviewed to bend and misstate the fact and if called on it he can always hide behind the joke. For example when Stewart called O’Reilly “the voice of reason” on Fox News, Mr. O’Reilly asked about Greta Van Susteren. Stewart, realizing that there were others on Fox who many might be considered reasonable parried with a joke.  

The real problem with interviewing a guy like Jon Stewart is that nobody wants to hear a comedian be serious. The portion of the interview where Stewart tries to give serious critiques of policy show that he lacks depth of understanding of critical issues. A lot of Mr. Stewart’s answers to Mr. O’Reilly’s more serious questions lacked, and here is your O’Reilly “Word of the Day, verisimilitude!

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Planes, Trains and Europhoria

Many liberal/progressives in America suffer from a debilitating disease known as “Europhoria.” This is a pathological envy of all things European. It also includes a belief that anything from a socialist country in Europe is better that anything American. The disease most often appears as a desire for socialized medicine or more government regulation of business. It also has more subtle manifestations such as buying a Saab or Renault or listening to Edith Piaf. Recently, a long dormant variation of Europhoria has resurfaced among American leftist: the desire to herd us all onto trains. Well, not “all” of us, just you peons who are clogging up the roads and filling the atmosphere with the recently discovered deadly pollutant known as “carbon dioxide!”

You see my friends the answer to all of our problems is so simple. It’s just sitting there waiting for us to discover that we can have full employment, economic growth, universal healthcare, a reduced carbon footprint, peace in the Middle East and a healthier, whiter smile if we just build a few high speed railroad trains at select points around the country!

Passenger trains are like liberal talk radio, if they were economically viable some rich capitalist Republican would already be running those businesses. Before we get into building new systems perhaps some sanity will hit the Obama Administration and they will examine the profit and loss statements of already existing passenger systems in America. The words “fat chance” comes to mind.

Amtrak is a black hole within a bottomless pit falling into a sinkhole of dollars. Amtrak which began operations in 1971 had its second best year ever in 2009 losing “only” $32 per passenger. In other words for each person who got on to an Amtrak train in 2009 we could have bought each of them twelve gallons of gas and had enough left over for several million burgers at McDonalds and not had the legacy costs. In 2008, the last year for which I could find complete records they showed a total loss of over $230 million. The total debt being carried by Amtrak is just a shade under $8 billion, coincidentally the amount the Obama Administration wants to use from stimulus money for three new “high speed” rail projects.

At the state level California, now over 30 billion in debt, is touting a new rail link from LA to San Francisco. The cost is proposed to be $45 billon with an annual operating cost of $1 billion. Let’s now imaging something that hasn’t been done since the Polk Administration and say by some miracle the State and Feds can bring this thing in on budget and operate the system for $1 billion a year. The proposed cost of a ticket from downtown LA to San Francisco is $55. At that price they would have to get a little over18 million folks a year to ride the train or just under 50,000 a day. Let me put that in prospective, if each train car held 100 passengers that would mean you have to pack 500 cars a day to break even! If you figure 10 cars per train that would be 25 trains a day going each way, one each hour plus one extra, 24/7 all of them absolutely packed full. I know this is starting to sound like one of those junior high word problems but at that rate how many years would it take to pay off the bonds for construction? The answer is never! No, you don’t have to show your work.

Cities are not immune from this train lunacy. The City of Cincinnati is currently running a $100 million dollar plus budget deficit but has just approved over $700 thousand for a study of a proposed 2 mile trolley system. The proposed system would create 40 permanent jobs at a cost of $220 million or roughly $5.5 million per job. To put this in terms we can all understand if this trolley could make $1 million a year it would be paid off when we are celebrating the 200^th anniversary of me finally getting my personal jet pack!

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Why Do People Make Sex Tapes?

 

Another sex tape has come to light. This time it’s not some starlet trying to make a name for herself or an aging beauty queen all tied up in her attempt to stay young and beautiful. Nor is it a young person making a youthful misjudgment. The latest sex tape to surface features one of America’s most famous ambulance chasers, the progressive’s favorite everyman, John Edwards.

Has anything good ever come from having a video of your sexual escapades go public? Why anyone other than a pornographer, blackmailer or stalker spying on their favorite sports reporter would ever make a sex tape is beyond me. I have heard all the reasons, enhanced intimacy, separation and whatever other lame excuse people come up with and none of them fly. Maybe I’m just jealous because any sex tape featuring me would be in the “short subject” category and feature lines of dialogue like,  “… move over a little,” “you’re on my hair,” “That’s it?” and “…are you still awake?”

It seems that Mr. Edwards, while getting ready to enter the Iowa Caucuses was busy videoing his escapades with the already pregnant Ms. Rielle Hunter. You remember how Mr. Edwards made such a big deal about his family and standing with his sick wife. A few people said back then that any lawyer who made a fortune off of bad science and unsophisticated juries was not to be trusted. They said any guy who used his dying wife as a prop in his campaign lacked clear moral vision. Those people were vilified but it seems they are now owed an apology.    

 John Edwards was trying to tell us all something when he said there were two Americas during his presidential campaign. There is the American we live in out here in Flyoverland where you work hard, try to do the right thing, and when you make a mistake admit it. Then there is the John Edwards American where build a fortune by you fleecing insurance companies and then live your hedonistic life behind closed doors while your wife and kids are made to look like fools. At the same time you are trying to sell another wagon load of manure to the American public to keep your ego fed.

Perhaps the most embarrassing thing about the Edwards sex tape is that three times during it the stylist comes in to fix his hair.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Bailouts, Buyouts, and Conan’s Millions

Imagine there was a bank, you know those evil fat cat bankers the Obama Administration loves to hold up as the economic boogeyman, that had taken a large piece of financial backing from The Federal Government. Before I get going here why is it that Mr. Obama wants to make sure there are no banks that are too big to fail but doesn’t feel the same about car companies. Could it be that car companies have union employees whose bosses funnel hundreds of millions from their member’s dues to the Democrat Party?

Now imagine that there was a guy working at the bank for 17 years who was a rising star in the financial world. He gets a big promotion after the bailout of his bank. Suddenly he isn’t performing so well. The profits in his division are down. He has a contract but because times are tough and the guy’s falling performance the bank gives him the ax. The guy makes a big stink and demands that if he is going to be replaced the bank has to buy out his contract. The bank offers him 30 million dollars to take a hike.

That isn’t good enough the guy says. Not only does he want his money but since he is being let go a lot of his staff will also lose their jobs so he demands another 12 million so they all have a soft landing. The bank says “ok” and pays out the money.

How do you think the Obama Administration would have reacted? What do you think the coverage of this event would have been in the mainstream media? I think there would have been all sorts of outrage in the press and on TV. I think every leftie from President Obama to Nancy Pelosi to David Axelrod would be screaming about getting our money back from these thieves.

So why is nobody screaming about the huge failure bonus being paid with our money to Conan O‘Brian? That is exactly what the money NBC paid to O’Brian is; a huge golden parachute for failing on the Tonight Show. More importantly, its money from the people of the United States he is getting. I wish I had a blackboard so I could go a little Glenn Beck on you but follow me for a minute.  

NBC, National Barrack Communications, and its other so called news outlets like MSNBC are a part of General Electric. General Electric is run by Obama loyalist and advisor Jeffrey Immelt, who until recently allowed GE to continue to do business with Iran through middlemen as documented by Bill O’Reilly.  General Electric, as part of the economic bailout, received billions in loan guarantees for its GE Capital division.  So why no Obama outrage over a company that took our money paying out huge dough to an under performer? Why no Tim Geithner or Larry Summers demanding that salaries at GE and its subsidiaries be kept to $500,000?

Imagine Mr. O’Brian had a real job.  Perhaps at a bank or one of those evil Healthcare Insurance companies the current administration loves to demonize and he dropped the business by half when he took over. Would the President and his friends be alright with him walking with a huge payout? Why is it cool to honor Mr. O’Brian’s contract but not the contracts of hundreds of bankers and other Wall Street employees who actually made money for their employers?

My theory is that like AIG and GM, Conan was too big to fail!

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Sherry Brown Comes Out From Under His Rock

The new “Most Liberal” , I’m sorry, “Most Progressive” Senator Sherry Brown has crawled out from under his rock to get a ride on Air Force One . Senator Brown was seen today getting off of AF One in Cleveland to accompany the President on a quick tour of Northern Ohio.

He and the President formerly known as “The One” are attending several “safe” events in Senator Brown’s one time congressional district. Strange the Senator who is in big trouble at home come 2012 would attach him to the President who just put the last nail in the coffin of Martha Coakley. But that’s how these “Progressives” are, blind as well as tone-deaf.

The coward Brown only shows up at well controlled events where he will not have to face any serious questioning from Ohioans. I am sure Sherry will be touting “green” jobs and spouting other far left non-ideas.   No doubt after the rejection on Tuesday neither one of these bozos will be talking health care. Now they have a new boogeyman ”Banks Too Big To Fail”  Not a word will be said about “Car Companies To Big To Fail.”  If banks had union employees they too would be beyond reform.  No doubt there will be hundred of union dupes in the audiences who aren’t aware that these two want to legalize millions of illegals to take their jobs and drive their ages and benefits down. Their union bosses pay along to keep their nice offices and limo rides They don’t care if the dues is coming from the workers who built the union or the new guys from the south.

I hope the Community College in Loraine is hiring some adjunct faculty in November 2012. I would hate to see Sherry down at the unemployment line with the folks he helped put out of work.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Hollywood’s Top Five Underrated Actor /Tough Guys

 

I just finished voting for the Screen Actors Guild awards and after wading through the five “screeners” they sent me I started wondering about the leading men of today. In this day of confused metro sexual male stars one might wonder where have all the real men gone. 

 Look at the leading men of today. When I saw Leonardo DiCaprio as a tough guy in “Gangs of New York” I wasn’t sure if it was a drama or a comedy. Matt Damon isn’t too bad but I‘m not convinced he could take a punch. I like Bill Pullman but he looks like he is always on the verge of breaking into tears. George Clooney, please, my sister could throw him down and twist him up like a pretzel.

Here are my top five unrecognized real men of filmdom. I skipped the obvious choices like The Duke and Clint and went for some guys who are well known but not often looked at as Alpha dogs. Can you imagine any of these guys sitting in anything but a leather barber chair? Can you see any of them wondering if they should get frosted tips or a mani-pedi? Just being a tough guys wasn’t enough for my list they also had to have the craft of acting down too!

Even modern actors who seem to know their way around a good street fight like Vin Diesel and The Rock don’t have the acting chops that a lot of the classic tough guys did.  What’s that, Chuck Norris, Steven Segal and Jean Claude Van Damme? I like Chuck’s politics and Segal’s new reality show has promise but please don’t waste my time trying to convince me that those guys wouldn’t wilt under the steely eyed stare of any of the five guys in my list. Hum… Five Guys, while you’re reading I’m stepping out for a burger.

5 Richard Roundtree  

One word -Shaft! They say this cat is a bad mother….and he is! Richard is a New Yorker, football player and manly enough to beat a rare form of male breast cancer.

4 Lee Marvin  

One of my favorite all time movie bad guys is Liberty Valence. So much pure evil without a hint of any redeeming social value he could have been a Democrat. He served in World War two and was wounded in the battle of Saipan. He would have been higher on my list but I have talked to a few people who knew him and he was apparently a pretty nasty guy in real life. They invented the word “palimony” for this guy.

3 Charles Bronson 

From The Magnificent Seven to his series of Death Wish films he was a man of few words. He hung in with wife Jill Ireland as she suffered through cancer. That’s a man!  

2 Edward G Robinson

The real OG! From being Little Caesar Rico to the evil Dathan and then slapping down a straight flush on fellow tough guy Steve McQueen in the “Cincinnati Kid” nobody was more the quintessential American tough guy than Eddie G.  Not bad for a Jewish kid from Romania!

1  Denzel Washington  

The epitome of the modern strong silent type. Who else could play Malcolm X, the rogue cop in Training Day, a stoic naval officer and a tort lawyer and make them all sympathetic? I can’t wait to see the Book of Eli. My favorite Denzel tough guy line is when as Detective Keith Frazier in “Inside Job” he enters a restaurant and the maître d asked him, “May I have your hat?”  He comes back with, “No get your own!” Shades of Philip Marlow!

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy:Just a Joke

Obama on the Scott Brown victory: “It’s all Bush’s fault!”

What an excellent gift for the President on his one year anniversary in office. A reminder that he promised to unite us and lead from the center. His mask is off and the vast majority of the people do not like what they see.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Right on the Rise, Massachusetts

Tomorrow in the State of Massachusetts the end of the Obama Era begins.

The race is tighter than a circus fat man wearing a 36 inch belt. The winning margin will be  razor thin and I believe Scott Brown will prevail. He may lose but the fact that a Republican unknown can even make a serious challenge in The Socialist Republic of Kennedy/Kerry is ringing through the halls of Congress as the reaper calls to bring out the dead. Many left wing congressmen who ran on centerist platforms and are voting for the Pelosi/Obama agenda are phoning headhunters and updating their resumes.

Reid is finished in Nevada. Boxer is in trouble in California! Deleware and Conneticut may elect Conservative in November.

Hope and Change are coming but they aren’t the changes Obama promised. Just like we needed Jimmy Carter to get to Ronald Reagan we needed BHO to get to the next wave of conservative leadership.

My only question is who wll rise from the right to lead us? My guess is it is not someone with a big profile on the national scene today.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Art Cowards

 

The left has a long tradition of bowing down to dictators and others they fear. No, I am not talking about President Obama stooping to kings and other foreign leaders. That is just another example of a long tradition of silliness that is often seen from liberals. What I am talking about is how many on the left live in fear. They try to mask it as respect or cultural reverence but it is fear.

The latest example comes from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.  It seems that these liberal defenders of the freedom of artistic expression, who would never listen to a conservative complaint about a display, have removed a number of depictions of Mohammad from the collection formerly known as the Islamic Galleries. The name “Islamic Galleries” has been changed “Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran Central Asia and Later South Asia.” Man, that is a mouthful!

Why the changes at the Met? Simple, the people in charge know that Islamic Fundamentalists don’t fool around. If they ask you to remove a drawing of Mohammed because they find any depiction of the founder of their religion objectionable, you take it down or face a fatwa. Think I’m wrong? Ask your local Danish Cartoonist or Dutch filmmaker about artistic tolerance under Islam. The folks running the Met are attached to their heads and know how to take a hint. There will be no long court battle or Constitutional challenge raised.

This is not reverence for culture or religions. It is fear of reprisal by an Islamic Extremist. Imagine the Met gets to display some Mapplethorpe photos or perhaps the infamous Piss Christ. I, as a right wing conservative, ask them to consider my religious and cultural values and take the display down.  I get laughed out of the office. Why? Because the guy giving the sermon down at St. Patrick’s isn’t going to try to get one of his more fervent followers to walk up 5^th Avenue and cut your head off.