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.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.
Click here to view the ad
"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...
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