Radical Transparency

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john mccain

October 24, 2008

Faulty Dictionaries

Tom Ridge on the fact that Obama has a reported 7 to 13 percentage point lead in Pennsylvania:

If John McCain has a Webster's dictionary, the words not in it are surrender, quit or give up.

A. If he has a dictionary.  Which makes me wonder what percentage of people these days actually do have dictionaries.

2. Congrats to Webster's for building a very serious brand.  Maybe Tom Ridge is a statistical outlier here, but I bet there are quite a few other people that refer to all dictionaries as Webster's dictionaries.  Webster's dictionaries now join the likes of Band-Aids, Q-Tips, and Slurpees as branded products whose names now stand for entire product categories.

d. When it comes to common dictionary metaphors, I much prefer: if you look up the word "tough" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of John McCain.  Mostly because I like the image of some kid that doesn't know the meaning of an adjective flipping to a page, finding a picture of someone or something that the adjective describes, and trying to make a visual connection.  In the McCain/tough case, I imagine the hypothetical kid guessing that "tough" means bald or old or grumpy.
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September 26, 2008

Suggestive Advertising from MSNBC

Does this not look a little bit like Obama is about to lean in and kiss McCain?

Sorry about the smallness of the pic.  It's a screen capture of a banner ad on the bottom of a blog post I was just reading in my Google Reader.  I tried to find a bigger version to capture, but no love on my first quick search.

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July 19, 2008

The Heroic Liability

When considering candidates for elected office, I think it's weird that we consider military heroism an asset. 

I think we should celebrate war heroes, respect them, give them medals, throw parties for them, and tap their military wisdom when military wisdom is needed.

I do not, however, think a fancy military record correlates with ability to govern.

Look at the heads of state in Africa.  War heroes.  Revolutionaries.  People that liberated their countries from horrible oppression.