In the ad by the GOP-leaning Club for Growth, an announcer asks a couple leaving a barber shop, “What do you think of Howard Dean’s plans to raise taxes on families by $1,900 a year?”
The man responds: “What do I think? Well, I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading …,” and the woman continues, “… body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.”
I saw this mentioned earlier today and for some reason, something just struck me about some of these supposedly pejorative words.
- Latte-drinking: for some reason, liking strong coffee in the Italian style is bad. Perhaps it makes you elitist, or unAmerican (drip coffee should be good enough for anyone: never mind that coffee originated in what used to be called Arabia, for the moment). This also seems to be a criticism of how people spend their money, which is usually a core GOP value/talking point.
This also seems to be an attack on craftsmanship, from the roaster to the barista: when I consider that the party most closely associated with those who turned craftspeople into factory cogs are using a kind of class warfare (of skilled vs unskilled labor) or inciting jealousy (claiming “those people think they’re better than you because they use Product X” when the X-philes think nothing of the kind) to garner their votes, it’s disappointing no one sees it.
Same thing could be applied to micro-brewed beer or any boutique/artisan product: if it’s not available on every Main Street, it can’t be good.
- Volvo-driving: well, obviously, I have to ask why just Volvos? Why not Mercedes and BMWs? Is there something wrong with choosing safety over performance or status? Volvo has gotten a rap as being the vehicle of choice for indulgent, overly-fastidious drips, while similar and often more expensive marques have escaped it. Makes no sense to me.
- New York Times-reading is bad, but of course, it’s got “New York” right there in the title: how quaint. Of course, the fact that a lot of news that people are interested in won’t appear anywhere else, especially those who want more than their local supermarket circulars, is one of the NYTimes’ strengths.
- Sushi-eating is bad because it’s different and not widely available: you have to go to some overpopulated Babylon (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco) to find it. That can’t be good.
- Body-piercing is not something I have any interest in or strong feelings about, but self-expression is always discouraged by some people. And in a sense, it makes it easy to judge people by their appearance from a greater distance: you’d think it would be be encouraged for that reason alone . . .
As far the whole “tax hiking” versus “government-expanding” argument, I’d like to see tax cuts reframed as “service cuts” and have candidates and “journalists” (do we still have those anywhere?) expound on what services are now superfluous. But there’s as much chance of that as there is of someone making it clear who benefits from the budget follies/tax cuts.
via SF Gate