Are we living in the age of...
DIMINISHED EXPECTATIONS?

We seem to live in a culture where the painfully obvious is oftentimes presented as a huge, startling innovation. The slogan that immediately comes to mind is BURGER KING'S "we won't make it until you order it" tag-line. (Or is that Jack-In-The-Box? All of these fast-food joints just kinda run together after a while...) So am I supposed to be grateful that my "McWhopper" hasn't sat under the heat lamp for several hours before some pimply underpaid counter clerk tosses it on my plastic food tray?

Continuing with this theme (you can see I'm attempting to develop my topic here), I think there was a winemaker who once advertised, "we will sell no wine before its' time"...which is probably good, because if you don't give the wine enough time, it's just GRAPE JUICE. See what I mean; 'painfully obvious'? Unconsciously or otherwise, it's as if we've been conditioned over the years, to expect LESS and LESS.

Another case in point...REPRISE RECORDS, the label once owned by Frank Sinatra, gloriously advertised on its' album sleeves, "Reprise Records...to play and play again". Well, I certainly hope so...I'd feel short-sheeted if I'd bought a new Jimi Hendrix or Kinks' album (both artists were on Reprise), and it disintegrated after I'd played it only a couple of times. Reprise used that slogan back in the '60s, so it becomes obvious that our sense of 'diminished expectations' has been with us for a while.

This next item was previously referred to, somewhere in this blog, long ago, but could apply here: Still another really dumb ad slogan was the one adopted by Snyders' Bread, a northwest bread chain that was recently bought out by someone else. Snyders' used to advertise itself as "The Good Bread". Huh? What? I kinda think, 'if it ain't good, why bother to make it?' And if someone's selling bread that's not 'good', they oughta be reported to the FDA.

So where am I going with all of this? Well, in the light of the idiocy behind this current Prezzidential administration, the next election looms. Come this time next year, we'll just begin to be bombarded by finger-pointing political advertising. This brings me to the subject of Howard Dean...remember back when he won a primary in the last election, and he was whooping and hollering over the microphone at a rally? He came off to a lot of people (or, at least to a lot of talking heads who transmitted the story) as a wacko. And it probably cost him any chance of winning his party's nomination, let alone the Prezzidency.

So, imagine, if you will, that Howard Dean works up the nerve to run again. What's gonna be his platform? Low taxes? Nah, we've been promised that before. Health care for all? Nah, prob'ly not gonna happen. A chicken in every pot? Nah...what with the rising cost of poultry, that probably won't be possible. But Howard Dean, the loony of yesteryear, can promise one thing...should he ever get brave enough to run again...



It's kinda sad, actually, that whenever I hear ol' Howard's name, I immediately remember him, holding that microphone, whooping and hollering; indeed, almost foaming at the mouth. And his Prezzidential aspirations may be forever tarnished by 10 or 15 seconds of vocal abandon on his part. Oh well, things could be worse...in terms of Prezzidential politics, Howard Dean (nor anyone else, for that matter) could NEVER be NEARLY as tarnished as Senator Edward Kennedy. Sad, really.
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I am in the process of building up endurance in my left index finger; that's the one that controls the MUTE button; by this time next year, I'll be able to ZAP, ZAP, ZAP them political ads. And, that little Prezzidential countdown-clock (look to your left!) continues to tick, tick, tick away.