Sunday, September 05, 2004
"Wealthy, culturally out-of-touch" opportunism
The Democrats and their nominal leader John Kerry seem to be suffering image problems. As per today's Bush is Bad News item:
Several Democrats said they were not happy to see news photographs of Mr. Kerry windsurfing in the Atlantic waters off Nantucket during the convention, suggesting that it underlined the very image of Mr. Kerry - as a wealthy, culturally out-of-touch liberal - that the Republicans were trying to convey.
"I might have gone windsurfing - you certainly have a right to clear your head,'' said Mr. Rendell, a former head of the Democratic National Committee. "But I'm not sure I would have taken the press with me."
In the (designer) Democrat trenches outside the RNC at Madison Square Garden, WSJ.com Opinion Journal's Pulitzer Prize winning writer Daniel Henninger explored a similar theme amongst Kerry acolytes, and found a very different atmosphere to that of the anti-Vietnam war protests of 1968:
One man stood like a sentinel at the park's entrance with a sign that read: "The U.S.--Founded, Grown and Sustained by Mass Extermination."
Unlike 1968, many people were in their cell-phone bubbles.
A young guy was showing a shirt he was trying to sell --black, sleeveless, with large, hanging arm openings. "If you get the large and you start moving around a lot, it won't bunch up so much."
Today's protesters ... know how to wear clothes and accessories ... you could see shoes by Nike and Timberland, bike helmets by Bell, backpacks by Kelty, Caribee and Mizuno. They knew how to assemble this stuff.
There was a tall kid in brown pouch slacks. He had the bottoms neatly rolled up and draped over soft black sneakers. He was wearing a blue bandanna, had a silver earring and an orange and gray backpack. Everything matched. An army surplus belt held his water. There was a girl in a beret, green T-shirt and baggy gray slacks rolled just to catch the top of her socks. One of her socks was gray and the other was argyle. They set off her scuffed combat boots.
The fashion industry hires people now to hang around events like this to collect raw data ... By next spring, it will be on sale at malls everywhere.
So it seemed a paradox that at the other end of the demonstration, outside Madison Square Garden, the protesters were wearing pig masks, yelling "oink, oink" and making fun of Dick Cheney, calling Halliburton "Halli-bacon" and denouncing the Republicans as slaves to corporate America, even while they themselves were draped in corporate design logos.
The 1968 convention demonstration was led by Abbie Hoffman, a character. This one was led by Michael Moore, a brand. His look is his logo.
