Obama seeks return of the cool
Barack Obama had all the 2008 cool.
Now he’s trying to get at least some of it back.
A video of Hollywood A-listers singing a Will.i.am song about him, a Shepard Fairey painting with “HOPE” beaming in bold letters beneath his face, constant buzz on social media — the Obama cultural phenomenon four years ago lit up the youth vote like no campaign before. So as the president gears up for a reelection run that’s going to struggle with independents and moderates, his team is looking to revive the cool appeal — and reignite the young voters who’ve strayed.
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There’s a lot of ground to make up.
“A little of the sex appeal is gone,” explained Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, which helps young voters engage in the political process. “The butterflies in the stomach aren’t there.”
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Keeping up with the pulse, the campaign joined Spotify to share its 2012 playlist with supporters. That’s the latest in an aggressive social media presence that includes Twitter accounts for the president and first lady, a Facebook presence, a YouTube channel, a Flickr page and a Google Plus profile. The White House also has tried to up his credibility with accounts on the microblogging site Tumblr and photo sharing platform Instagram.
The Obama 2008 campaign logo, a trendy graphic design ‘O’ rising over a red-and-white striped field, is back again this year with updates. It’s been modernized with matte colors replacing the glossy and more varied shades of red, white and blue. On BarackObama.com, the 2008 color palette and design has become more sophisticated, with bright blue replaced by navy blue, baby blue and white.
The changes, said Obama 2008 design director of new media Scott Thomas, are meant to allude to the cool while introducing the notion that Obama is now “more distinguished and more experienced” than he was four years ago.
Obama’s been trying to manage the expectations himself.
“I know that it’s not going to be exactly the same as when I was young and vibrant and new,” he said at a fundraiser last year. “And there was — posters everywhere, hope. The logo was really fresh. And let’s face it, it was cool to support me back then. At cocktail parties, you could sort of say, ‘Yeah, this Obama guy, you haven’t heard of him? Let me tell you about him.’”
Silly us, we thought electing a president was about competence, experience, hard work, accomplishment and policy. We voted for the nerdy old woman with cackles, cankles and pantsuits.
So thanks to all the Kewl Kidz we got stuck with an incompetent hipster doofus. Now they want to reelect him.
I picked a bad year to quit drinking.
Filed under: Barack Obama Tagged: | Barack Obama
They’re going to pull out all the stops to bring up his cool. OWS is just the beginning of lots of clever well designed efforts. With all the stunning horrible things he’s done for the banksters and wall street and the rights he’s taken away (habeas corpus anyone), I have friends who I thought were smart talking about the real Obama and what great things he’s accomplished. And of course how the Republican’s are worse. Damn sad.
I dunno, DT. I wouldn’t use the words “clever” and “well designed” in the same sentence as OWS. And I got nuthin’ against the owies. They have a right to protest. They’re free to mill around and graze all they want. Mill and eat, mill and eat. But cattle do that all the time and no one calls them clever.
Owies = cattle
OWS = dairy/ranch
Obama is positioning himself between the crazy Owies and the insane Tea Partiers.
The Owies are being used, but they’re too stupid to know it.
“The butterflies in the stomach aren’t there.”
Somebody wise and cynical once told me that if you get butterflies in your stomach, the guy is probably making you sick. That’s your body warning you to get the hell out of there.
It’s kind of funny, because that is true of every other situation in life, so why make an exception for love and politics? If your stomach is doing flip flops, you’re either in a really stressful meeting or you’re about to commit some felony. Regardless, that’s not love your feeling.
this made me laugh
Iowa Hawk
David Burge
For a comeback, the Beach Boys could write a song about drag race between a Prius and a Volt. It would be 63 minutes long.
when i was young,
hot rods were cool
in backtrack’s world he is trying to make us think
chevy volts are cool.
not gonna happen
Well looks like another election year I won’t be “cool”
“Winning the Future, WTF?, and they call me an idiot ” ~Sarah Palin
this article explains things that the backtrack bunch will never understand
http://pjmedia.com/blog/its-not-personal-why-we-resist-obamas-power-grabs/?singlepage=true
Sorry if this offends anyone but I always equated the frenzy around obama to the absurd adulation afforded Mark Rothko. I went to the retro at the Whitney more than a decade ago and it was pornographic how the media turned him into the greatest artist ever. amazed me. Everyone was on the band wagon. I went to an invite only gala there and as I am a huge philistine I researched the guy extensively before going. Found it hilarious when the people I had known from college were regurgitating the stuff I had just read. They were profoundly moved because The New Yorker told them they should be. It befit their standing in society. Same thing, I felt, happened with bambi.
Difference for me is that I wanted to be moved by Rothko and wondered what I was missing. Am I just such white trash that my tiny brain cannot appreciate such sublime artistry?
Went back two days later with a kick ass 3 Martini buzz and looked again. I appreciate the artist but still cannot fathom the hoopla.
The sound of oblah blah’s voice has the same effect on me. I can see why we had to endure the “Reporter’s Gone Wild” video of him on a cell phone. It was to get him elected.
I would suggest that you not go to the Rothko Chapel. It is supposed to be a religious like experience. I always thought it would be a good place to commit suicide.
i do not dislike his work. He just reminds me of a clever woman on HGTV. Put this color sofa against this colored wall opposing this colored carpet.
I think the show is called color splash
Aside– My little one and I were having an all out argument about her having a snack an hour after she wouldn’t eat her dinner on Saturday. She is 5 and I easily fall into fights as if I were the same age. She doesn’t yield an inch and neither do I. She told me I was going to Hell and would never get out because I was being mean to her and it was not fair. Sent me into a giggle fest which just made her angry. No clue how to deal with that so I made her help me prepare the next day’s entire meal. Fun for ten minutes but then she got bored and I was like nope gotta keep going and then you get to clean it all up. She ate everything on her plate. Kid is thank god very fit(swim and dance) and I would never command her to eat everything on her plate All i say is you won’t be getting anything later. Even at 5 i think the little urchin learned something by slaving over a stove.
Girl is my grand niece and circumstances just caused her to be in my lap. I was visiting from New York and my parents asked me to pick her up at Day Care. She was six months old and in a crib along side 20 other cribs. She never went back. I was so appalled at what I had witnessed. No way. I became responsible for her and to her at that moment. I always wanted to be an artist and was told I was very gifted as an actor but 25 years ago the world was different and I was told i was too serious of a gay. Lucky me because of my rejection I got to help color the greatest canvas there is and that is a human life.
Motherhood/parenthood is so grossly under appreciated it is really all about the suffering artist. You never ever ever stop worrying.
http://www.maniacworld.com/grandfather-clock-with-some-attitude.html
I would buy this and keep it in my living room
There are two job openings in my entire county. One is for a surgical nurse and the other is for a DOS III Elec Eng. I don’t even know WTH the second one is, so that’s out.
I’m thinking of applying for the surgical nurse position because there’s a small chance I might be able to Joe Cool my way through that interview. I’ve done some work as a community organizer and my mother was once a poor woman on food stamps. If they do decide to hire me, I’m not even going to ask for a Nobel Prize on account of the fact that I don’t really have a nursing license.
LOL
Too funny
Sounds like a plan!
Oprah Winfrey Begs Public For OWN Ratings. This is pathetic…soliciting Nielson households on twitter.
“I think running OWN is punishment enough. It sucks.” And that is why there are no viewers. You would think she might understand that she needs to spend some of those billions on some programing that does not have her in the middle of it. She is seriously overexposed.
I am offended that she gets a nickle every month from me. Yep 5 cents from your local cable bill goes to that woman and last year she asked for more as she is minority owned. I use parental controls to block the station
At what point does the “poor oppressed minority card” expire for those who have managed to make it into the upper class financially? So you are saying that billionaire Oprah gets a higher cable payment just because she is a minority! Wow!
Back in the 90′s our family practitioner was a hispanic woman. Her husband was a surgeon. I don’t know if he is hispanic or not. On one occasion while paying my copay I observed some outgoing mail which indicated that her college age daughters were getting affirmative action preferential treatment because of their hispanic ethnicity. Should the children of physicians qualify for affirmative action just because of their ethnicity?
I saw this earlier on Big Gov and left a comment, would Oprah hire Obama to run Harpo ?
Crowder at Huffpo? Stop lying….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-crowder/cpac-2012-rap-video_b_1273779.html
I’ve been a fan of Crowder for a couple of years, he does rap poorly as a parody…..see Peace Prize on his youtube. But he does better as a documentarian (see Canada Health Care and Detroit). Better yet, see my blog cloud CROWDER. I knew him when
Ok, whipped up a blog post:
http://bloghopenchangery.com/2012/02/13/leave-steven-alone-oh-wait-crowder/