The Anchoress

As we head toward the 2008 elections, I was thinking it might be fun - from time to time - to look back at the mad partisanship that has been gaining momentum on both sides and destabilizing the nation like a train careening too fast down a mountain and destined for a curvy surprise.

Today, a look at one of the finest displays of BDS and the terrible effect it has on its victims:

HEY, NY TIMES, PUT DOWN THE BONG! (From Feb 5, 2007)

You had to know that only the NY Times could lure me back from my self-imposed blogging exile. The former “paper of record,” the paper which, indeed, is still the main vehicle by which other news organizations take their ledes, has reached a nadir (or is it a zenith) in Bush-Derangement-Syndrome Paranoia and Padded Cell Nincompoopery. If ordinary, “big-time, respectable journalists” have nothing to say about this - and they won’t - well, then their silence implies consent and we’ll know just how completely mad are the psyche wards of the fourth estate.

This Times writer, one Stuart Elliott, took a gander at yesterday’s mostly unimpressive Super Bowl Commercials and found - they were Bush’s fault. Because of Bush and his war, we couldn’t get good commercials this Super Bowl. It couldn’t be because Madison Avenue - currently run by yuppies - is out of ideas and working too hard to be hip, could it? No, no…it’s got to be the war in Iraq - and it’s evil cause, Dubya!

Wrote Elliott:

No commercial that appeared last night during Super Bowl XLI directly addressed Iraq, unlike a patriotic spot for Budweiser beer that ran during the game two years ago. But the ongoing war seemed to linger just below the surface of many of this year’s commercials.

More than a dozen spots celebrated violence in an exaggerated, cartoonlike vein that was intended to be humorous, but often came across as cruel or callous.
[...]
Then, too, there was the unfortunate homonym at the heart of a commercial from Prudential Financial, titled “What Can a Rock Do?”

The problem with the spot, created internally at Prudential, was that whenever the announcer said, “a rock” — invoking the Prudential logo, the rock of Gibraltar — it sounded as if he were saying, yes, “Iraq.”

Oh, heavens. Oh. My. Gawd.

If you’re looking at an ad for Prudential Insurance -whose symbol, for as long as I’ve been alive, has been the Rock of Gibraltar - and you’re hearing “a rock” as “Iraq,” then honey you’re speaking of your own obsessions and sad fixations, and not any subconsious angst being suffered by America and manifested by insipid Madison Avenue ads.

We need the psych-bloggers, Dr. Sanity, Siggy, Dr. Helen, Shrinkwrapped and Neo-neocon to calmly explain the concepts of “projection” and “paranoia” to this fellow.

In the meantime, this was a good thing, this piece by Elliott. It was a wonderful, timely and widely read example of the long-term effects of BDS upon the human brain, and it will go some ways toward giving just a little less credibility to the whole “blame Bush for everything” mentality that has so overtaken the left and the press.

With any luck at all, Mr. Elliott will soon start writing about the Perils of Global Warming and How We’re All Going to Die Because Bush Killed Kyoto Even Though Clinton, In 1997, Did Not Even Submit The Treaty To Congress (Which Made A Point Of Unanimously Rejecting It Anyway) Because It Was Smart of Clinton To Reject It But Stoopit of Moron Bush To Kill It And Al Gore Deserves An Oscar And America Is Suffering And Disappearing Because of Evil Bush Who Is Bad And Evil And Who Makes Wars Against Peaceful People And There Is No Threat Of Islamofascism, There Is Only A Threat Of Christofascism And Other Conservative Sorts Of Fascists Things.

I’m waiting for that one. I’ll get the popcorn going.

I love Ann Althouse’s pithy observation: So if the ads are violent, they’re about the war, and if the ads are sweet and gentle, they’re about the war? And whichever way they go, they are against the war, right?

See also: Rudy, Disorientation, Boys and Chesterton.

Also Writing:
Blue Crab Boulevard
The Political Pit Bull
Ed Driscoll
Captains Quarters Blog
Wizbang
The Moderate Voice
Michelle Malkin
Hot Air
Sensible Mom