My blog for this week has to do with the topic discussed in class on Monday (1/28) and that is about politics and the media. It is a TV commercial for Barack Obama that was shown during the Iowa caucuses. Some of the points that were discussed in Postman’s article and in class have to do with commercials talking to us about what is wrong with us, not about their product. They like to tell you their slogans and about what they do, with sometimes not even showing you the product. This commercial, to me, seems to fit in well with the topics that were discussed earlier today.
As mentioned this ad uses the same methods and tactics that all commercials use when trying to sell you a product, in this case it just happens to be someone selling themselves to the public. The commercial starts off by Barack speaking about his mother that died of cancer in 1995 and did not have enough money to pay her medical bills. The whole while he is talking about this in the introduction there are images of his mother holding him as a child. Also there are the famous black and white images and close up images that make him look powerful and strong. He then goes into talking about how this should not happen at all and that health care reform has been talked about in Washington for 20 years and nothing has been done. This is him telling us what is wrong, obviously we do not have proper health care and he is going to just snap his fingers and everything is going to be better. Makes me want to jump out of my seat and head to the polls to place my vote. He states that he has a plan. O that is fantastic, a plan to reform health care (which he just stated has been in the works for 20 years) and he is going to tell me about it within the remaining 15 seconds of the commercial? He then proceeds to tell the audience that he sees this everyday with people (this is all while the pictures keep scrolling of him shaking hands of his faithful followers). He has a very interesting quote about his plan. “I plan to cut costs and cover everyone………but unless we stop the bickering and the lobbyists, we’ll be in the same place 20 years from now….I am Barack Obama and I approve this message because to improve health care we need to fix Washington.” This is the end of the message as you can imagine. My point I am trying to make about how this relates to class is that the commercial is set up in a way so you know the product in a way (him) and he tries to tell you about all of the things that are wrong and why you should vote for him. He does not go into how he plans to reform health care, but merely states “I plan to cut costs and cover everyone.” To me this seems like just a way to put that bait in the water and hook you with his catchy slogan. He is sort of talking about the issues but no way from this commercial would you be able to understand his entire political platform. He is offering a quick fix to obviously something that has been brewing in Washington for 20 years and claims that in order to do this, we need to fix Washington. I might not be the foremost expert on politics but I sure know that him getting into office is not going to just “fix” the problems.
Click HERE to jump to the commercial
