I know some people are just going to want to rip into me for saying this, but after reading this piece in The Caucus about the Barack Obama ad being shown during the Super Bowl this evening (the link has the video there), I know why the Obama phenomena just isn’t appealing to me (sadly for Hillary Clinton, there isn’t much she’s doing that’s appealing to me either).
It actually is the underlying message Obama has been touting from the beginning that is the name of this ad, a word which isn’t in the ad itself but you can see on the screen before the ad runs (online) and The Caucus piece refers to: Join. (You can view the ad under the jump..)
I don’t like that. I don’t like the message that says, “Join.” I never have, ever. I am not a Democratic party girl – because I don’t like the idea of “join.” I’m certainly not going to be persuaded to vote for someone because they suggest that I need to join.
And yet, that is exactly the message and the pressure I hear from people I know and people I don’t know who support Obama. There are so many other reasons to support him – is “Join” the best they can do in these last crucial hours before Super Tuesday? That just seems very manipulative to me, and if there’s one thing that turns me off, it’s an attempt to be manipulated.
So – what exactly is wrong with the notion of “Join”?
Here’s the Merriam Webster definition of “join.” And it’s not as evil as maybe I’ve come to regard it, which is with the notion that you are giving up something of your own when you join. That you are becoming one with a mass, and that requires relinquishing something in exchange for what you’ve joined.
I suppose Obama isn’t suggesting that, but still – does anyone else get the same wrinkly crinkly feeling I get when I think that someone is asking me to do something because they want me to “join”?
If you haven’t seen the video, watch: