blue collar blues

dear mr. obama,

i felt compelled to write you the day after the pennsylvania primary to let you know why i didn't vote for you.

it's not that i was enamored with hillary. in fact, i think we can both agree she's sort of loud and that her voice is something like an alley cat being ground to death by a wood chipper. of course i like bill a whole lot. life was better in the 90's than it is now, and he was president for a lot of those years, so i think having him back in the white house could make times good again. we didn't talk about terrorists and the economy as much back then. it was more about oj simpson and tonya harding and so forth. times were simpler and i liked that. plus bill was just flat out cool, which i'm sure you'd agree with.

but this goes beyond my love of bill. frankly, mr. obama, if i might cut to the chase, i didn't vote for you because i'm afraid of your black skin and your funny name. while i'd be uncomfortable calling myself a racist i do know that i wouldn't want my daughter dating no black. why? they're disruptive in groups at the movie theater for one. second, they'd rather take a check from the government than work. and tell me this: why do so many black folks have handicap parking passes? lazy i tell you.

do you like tyler perry's body of work? i'll bet you do.






another thing: your middle name is hussein. as far as i can tell, that's an arab's name, just like saddam who's hopefully rotting in a pit of fire as we speak. how do we know a black arab like you won't blow up the white house your first day on the job? you'd probably be too lazy to do it on the first day.

of course those are jokes. i don't exactly believe all of that. but i am worried black people will over take the white species and you know they're dying to enslave us for a change. so that's something that lingers in the back of my mind about you.

also, i was told that you're an elitist and i don't like the thought being bossed around by some high-brow know-it-all champagne-drinking black arab. i'll bet the french just love you, don't they? you seem french to me, and i don't like that. senator clinton seems more american to me than you do. i'll bet you drive a prius, too. that just dawned on me.

fact is, i love guns, beer, bowling and The Lord. you seem like you don't, and therefore i'm afraid you won't represent my best interests if you become the president. i guess that's what it really boils down to for me.

i don't like you're pastor either. he thinks america's evil and i think the opposite is true. warrants mentioning.

in short, i don't trust you and therefore you didn't receive my vote. i can't quite put my finger on why that is, but if i figure it out i'll be sure to let you know.


mr. obama, i wish you all the best, mostly, and i thank you for your time.


sincerely,

anonymous blue collar male who's catholic and making less than $50,000 annually with no college education

mcdonald's fights culture

i want to talk about coffee & mcdonald's for just a minute.

here's the scene: two women are sitting in a bookstore cafe sipping coffee by a fire. think liberal arts grad students. not exactly mcdonald's bread and butter clientèle.

they break away from their NY Times and Dostoevsky and have an exchange similar to the following:

blond white girl: "Hey, so i heard mcdonald's makes lattes now."

jewish girl: "Well that's...that's...fantastic," she says, social consequences be damned.

and then they say things like i don't have to listen to jazz all day long! i can read gossip magazines again! i can watch reality tv! i don't really know how to speak french! i don't even know where paraguay is! what's paraguay?

And then the pitch: Try mcdonald's McCafe coffees. all the coffee, hold the attitude.

and i wonder aloud: who is Ronald McDonald appealing to with this ad?







possibility #1 - they are appealing to starbucks nation

maybe this commercial is on to something. maybe people across the country don't really like starbucks at all. maybe they're just trying to look cultured and intellectual. perhaps it will only take a few brave souls to stand up and break the chains of oppression that starbucks shackles us with. no more pretending. no more jazz or literature or notebooks. no more double roasted beans with italian names. no more! we can be ourselves. we CAN drink cheaper, less flavorful coffee at mcdonald's and chit-chat about non smart things. sweet.

maybe.

possibility #2 - they are appealing to wal-mart nation

assuming possibility #1 doesn't happen, then who else might this ad appeal to? might it be the very people who resent starbucks nation? people who see the starbuck elites as phony liberals and want nothing to do with them? people who revel in being quote-unquote less cultured than other's of us and will stake their superiority flag in the moral high ground of unpretentiousness?

leave it to mcdonald's to pick a culture fight in order to galvanize its base by uniting it against a different type of culture. no other restaurant chain is so self-conscious as to concern itself with the culture level of its customers (except maybe arby's). just advertise your product like burger king does. be proud of your cheap price and guilty pleasure appeal.

this is a classically political tactic, though. imitate your nemesis (hey, let's sell lattes like starbucks does!) and then destroy them for the very qualities that you admired and wanted to steal in the first place. this is like clinton or mccain killing obama on his message of hope and then ripping him off moments later (mccain: "i'm fired up and ready to go!" clinton: "yes we can!").

the final bit of crap here is that most people don't completely fit into one category. who doesn't go to both starbucks & mcdonald's from time to time? why do entities like mcdonald's and/or politicians always try to divide people against themselves in order to galvanize allegiances? i guess i just answered my own question there.







i can speak freely on these things since i'm impartial to the issue. i prefer dunkin' donuts.