Re-Branding or: We're Dancing As Fast As We Can Now with TestosteronePlus™
I guess we should have seen this coming.
For three years now all we have heard was that the American people would whole-heartedly get behind the war du jour and send our kids off to become battlefield mulch if only George Bush would explain the war better. And God knows that George Bush sold it the best that he could despite his limited verbal skills comprised of gutteral clicks, grunts, and the occassional "uh" thrown in for rhyming purposes. Initially a lot of Americans bought into it because the war appeared to be free, unless, of course, you had a kid who had to fight in it or you didn't care about putting the costs on a revolving credit plan, because, afterall, if you still have checks in your checkbook you must still have money. And the administration did promise that it would make our future whiter and brighter and give us four hour erections and help us lose twenty pounds in one week without having to sacrifice fatty foods!
You just had to sacrifice someone else's kid.
But then people started not buying the war. Sales were down. People started to ask to look at the receipts. There were even some returns. Sure there are still some true believers
but maintaining the war depends on volume volume volume because it works on low margins (unless your name is Halliburton). And, (using the one thing that you remember from your high school economics class) if people quit buying your goods and services, then where will you be? That's right: out of a job. Or working at Fox as an analyst, but nevermind that.
Now you could try diversifying and selling people something that they do want like universal health care or job security or alternative sources of energy...but that's boring because what you really like to do is smash things and then pay your friends to rebuild them...so you can smash them again. It's kind of like that thing from The Lion King except this one is called the "Circle of Cronyism".
So.
Whaddya gonna do when the people aren't buying what you're selling?
Re-brand.
Now, while the "War on Terror" is a great catch-all, it's not specific enough to the task at hand, and really, a war on terror could include spiders, spooky movies, rollercoasters, waking up next to Debbie Schlussel and she's laying across your arm; stuff like that. So it needed to be more to the point, more focused.
First the administration started out with "evildoers" but that sounded too Saturday Morning Superfriends and it sounded kind of juvenile when deeply serious people gathered together and talked about war and "Clashes of Civilization" and buttsex over brandies and cigars. Then you had your "suiciders" but that lacked the minimum daily requirements of literacy that we have come to expect of someone over the age of nine . "Muslims"? Again, paints too broad of a picture and there are at leat nine of them in the world who are actually pretty cool, so that's out. There was an attempt at "Islamojihadiexpialidocious" but the Disney lawyers threatened to sue and you don't want to fuck with those people, let me tell you. They make al Qaeda look like Up With People.
So Karl Rove focus-grouped it with Michael Ledeen, Sean Hannity, Captain Corndog, and that guy who used to play Carlton the Doorman on Rhoda, and they came up with:
Catchy. Semi-accurate if you don't look too closely. A little tricky with that 'c' in the middle instead of an "sh", but the freepers will catch on eventually.
And, as is always the case with me, the total rebranding effort reminded me of something I once saw. In this case, it comes from Eddie Izzard:
And dog food as well. There was a dog food a while back called “Mr. Dog.” It was a small can of dog food for small, yappy-type dogs. And there was a big advertising campaign, saying, “Buy Mr. Dog, for small, yappy-type dogs… and maybe, they’ll shut the fuck up!” So that was fine, and then there was a “stroke your beard meeting” back at Mr. Dog’s headquarters. (mimes stroking beard) “Well… we’ve sold but two cans of ‘Mr. Dog…’” which some people do say, “But two cans… Let’s change the name!” So they changed the name, from “Mr. Dog” to “Cesar.” Now that’s a bit of an image shift in my book of references. “Mr. Dog” – small dog, yes, you can see the sort of linky there. “Caesar” – Roman leader 2,000 years ago – small dog. Bit of a strangled route up to that one, isn’t it? Left at the traffic lights to get there… I think that’s a 3:00 in the morning decision, that one. (mimes dragging from joint) “It’s ‘Caesar,” we’ll call it ‘Caesar’! ‘Caesar’! What about…? Yeah, yeah, fucking ‘Caesar’! He was a Roman leader… Yeah, small dogs are Roman leaders, aren’t they? (offers joint to dog) All right, ‘Caesar’! But we’ll drop the ‘a’ out, right?” ‘Cause it was C-A-E-S-A-R, for some reason.
Coming January 2007 - Islamofascists v2.0 for small yappy-type bedwetters.
