The Paul Newman President: "Confident Smile and Kind Eyes"

Finally, I got the Obama thing. After a long afternoon of household chores and tired legs, I relaxed in front of the TV and found Michael Douglas' middle-class-guy-under-siege period (Disclosure, Fatal Attraction) and with it, annoying gadget ads that used to run exclusively on UHF channels when I was a kid, advertising miracle products for this or that, always for $19.99. Amazingly, after decades, it's still (usually) $19.99. And still, if you order NOW you get a bunch of free stuff.

One of those offers was for a Barack Obama commemorative plate -- called the Barack Obama Victory Plate -- which if ordered NOW, would come with a free stand, suitable for desktop display or wall hanging, and a certificate of authenticity from something called the American Historical Society. The ad does not mention that the web site selling the offer is discountmugs.com. There have been a spate of cheapjack TV ads for Obama commemorative coins, plates, who-knows-what -- but this one was special because of the editorial insight it offered:

Commemorating the day the world changed forever... Honoring the election of the 44th President of the United States, America's first African-American Commander-in-Chief... his confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all.

Click here to view the ad

The last line is one of the clearest and most insightful observations I've read about Obama after two-years of surfing news sites, blogs and opinion compilations.

"His confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all."

To re-use an oft-quoted line from my ill-spent youth: So that's what this is all about! Even the smitten Chris Matthews and Keith Olberman could not utter such concise insight into the appeal of our new President.

Seriously, it took a huckster to nail it. Obama does have kind eyes and a confident smile, and those are features that win confidence in movies and on the street. I've heard him described as handsome, young, athletic, yeah, yeah, yeah, but nothing that so clearly pinpoints his appeal to people who know nothing about him and don't care.

What a pity the line had to come from a rip-off TV ad. All you can find on Google about "The American Historical Society" is a litany of complaints from people who've been ripped off buying allegedly precious coins after watching late nite TV ads. How could they catch what David Gergen, Tom Friedman, Juan Williams, David Broder, Peggy Noonan, Dick Morris, and even Obama schills like Rachel Maddow and Bob Herbert missed?

Indeed -- why didn't I write that line? Now that I think about it, his eyes and smile kind of remind me of Paul Newman. From the mouths of salesmen...

Making Water Run Uphill

In one of my first blog posts, I got a little worked up about the bailout of GM and facetiously asked who would be next, the newspaper industry?

Well, Michelle Malkin's column and blog today report that top Connecticut officials think government should keep their small city newspapers from going out of business. I link it here because it is the apotheosis of bailout mentality. Not only do we forget that markets operate in sometimes brutal cycles, but also that technology disrupts entire industries and remakes them. You go with the cycles, and try to get the dislocated back in the game. You don't try to contradict market forces; it's like trying to make water run uphill. To most of us, this is old news, part of an economics class in college or a Wall Street Journal oped. But not to Connecticutt's political leadership:

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal asserted: “The newspaper is an information lifeline. It provides really an essential service.” Among the “essential services” Blumenthal thinks taxpayers should prop up: marriage notices and school sports announcements.

These items are easily and effectively disseminated online. Connnecticut consumers who are passing up the newspapers who offer these products obviously don’t agree with Blumenthal that it’s “essential” to get them in dead-tree form. But Gov. Rell seems to believe that quaintness is an argument for government funding: “There’s something about having that paper and being able to sit there with your cup of coffee or your tea and read through and find out not only the news but the real feel for a community.”

I've remarked in the past how aloof our political class seems to be, interested in us only when elections come around, with only pollsters to connect our lives to theirs. Here, then, is one more data point of proof.