Category: No Politics Friday

We have seen the video from Tuesday of Chief Justice Roberts getting a serious case of…stage fright? Amnesia? Whatever it was, it resulted in a botched version of the Constitutionally-mandated Oath of Office. For most of us this was a source of comedy, embarassment, or complete insignificance. Fox News, conversely, is spoon-feeding its conspiracist fringe audience an "I'm not sure (he) is actually President of the United States" (actual quote) line. This incident qualifies as one of the more noticeable inaugural mishaps in our nation's history. But right now Andrew Johnson, from beyond the grave, is saying "You call that a blown inauguration? I'll show you fuckers a blown inauguration."

In 1864 Andrew Johnson, the Tennessee Democrat chosen by Abraham Lincoln as his Vice-President to emphasize north-south reconciliation, arrived in Washington to take his oath of office with a not-so-minor case of typhoid fever. Typhoid fever killed a lot of people. Still does. So for starters the guy was sick as a dog. If you know anything about medical theory and patent medicines from the mid-19th Century you realize that Andy treated his malady with absolutely heroic quantities of alcohol. The night before the inaugural he got John Bonham drunk on whiskey at a Senate party. Hung over, he redoubled his consumption of brown liquor on the morning of the Big Day. Outgoing Vice President Hannibal Hamlin, in a move he would soon regret, was particularly generous and enthusiastic about plying his replacement with "medicine." At the ceremony Hamlin briefly spoke before yielding the floor to his successor.

This is where things got awesome.

In contrast to the stately tone typical of elitist 19th Century politics and which dominated the ceremony, Johnson was glowing red, soaked in sweat, and approximately piss drunk. The official Senate record, in what I can only assume is a kind understatement, states that Johnson "rose unsteadily to harangue the distinguished crowd about his humble origins and his triumph over the rebel aristocracy." The record notes that Lincoln sat in the audience with an expression of "unutterable sorrow" while Senator Charles Sumner was noted to bury his face in his hands. Hamlin made a valiant effort to end Johnson's performance, eventually quieting him down long enough to move on to swearing in the incoming Congress.

Before we go any further I want to recap: Andrew Johnson's inaugural address consisted of him blind drunk and screaming at all three branches of government.

Johnson ineptly attempted to swear in the incoming Senators but was too drunk and disoriented to accomplish this simple task. A Supreme Court justice eventually took over and Johnson was mercifully escorted from the premesis. Senator Zachariah Chandler wrote that:

The inauguration went off very well except that the Vice President Elect was too drunk to perform his duties & disgraced himself & the Senate by making a drunken foolish speech.

That he did, Zachariah. That he did. He F'ed that inauguration in the A. Andrew Johnson took one look at the highest peak of American public service and went straight for the whiskey. And he is now looking at the "controversy" over the Obama/Roberts flub and thinking, "Back in my day, it wasn't a blown inaugural until someone in the line of presidential succession got ripped to the tits and told off all and sundry of Washington's elite."

Everyone has a phobia that qualifies as irrational; needles, heights, insects, water, and so on.

Phobias can get obscure and, to an outside observer, ridiculous. I am afflicted with the horrors of gephyrophobia – the fear of bridges – albeit not severely. I don't go out of my way to avoid driving over bridges (and strangely walking over them doesn't bother me at all) but sometimes I get a little nervous about driving over them.

It makes no sense, obviously. My purpose in admitting this is to emphasize that I understand that phobias do not respond to logic before I point out the logical flaws in one of the most common fears: the fear of flying.

The amazing story of the airline pilot who put an A320 down on the Hudson River yesterday with no loss of life reminded me of two very good non-fiction books which are worth your time: Barry Glassner's The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things and Ben Sherwood's new Survivors Club. As the incident in New York illustrates nicely, the books combine to argue that people are prone to be afraid of things that are almost immeasurably unlikely (plane crashes, being attacked by poisonous snakes, being on a bridge while it collapses, etc) or, when they do actually happen, aren't nearly as dangerous as we think.

The exhaustive database at Plane Crash Info, a site intended to simultaneously entertain the morbid and soothe the fearful with statistics, shows that even when large airliners crash the vast majority of passengers (78%) survive. So not only are your odds of being in a plane crash miniscule, but on the unbelievably unlikely chance that you are in one you're probably going to live. Images of a very small number of sensational accidents with hundreds of fatalities are seared into our minds and drive our fears. We employ our tendencies toward dichotomous, black-and-white logic and decide that Plane Crash = Fiery Death.

We remember the 9/11 crashes or TWA Flight 800, examples that confirm our conclusions, but not Aloha Flight 243, a plane that literally came apart at 35,000 feet with 90 people aboard – 89 of whom survived.

I understand that the fear of flying is independent of statistical probabilities.

Aviophobes know that flying is a hundred times safer than the driving they do fearlessly every day. I know that my odds of being on a collapsing bridge are roughly equal to my odds of being the next Pope. The books mentioned above are both very interesting as studies of how our fears are often socially constructed in addition to being rooted in psychology. Our minds are rarely swayed either by numbers or by appropriate anecdotal evidence. Irrational fears are among our brains' most stubborn tenants.

This is the time of year in which we all commit ourselves to losing weight, quitting smoking, writing the great American novel, being a better husband, etc. It's cute how seriously we take ourselves as we pledge to do shit that, really, we know we're not going to do. For most people this is a painless process of pledging, forgetting, and then waiting 12 months to repeat the process. Well, I wrote mine down. Some of you did too, here or elsewhere. How did you do?

I think I accomplished my overarching goal, which was to avoid having a year as bad as 2007.

Mission accomplished, Ed. More specifically, though, I laid out a series of goals which culminated in various levels of success and failure. My five resolutions were as follows:

No political bile for the holidays, just classic moments in the long history of horrendous ideas. Enjoy the sole surviving episode of the 1990 British sitcom Heil Honey, I'm Home! The plot places Adolf and his nagging sitcom wife Eva Braun in the role of Honeymooners-style suburbanites whose lives are turned topsy-turvy by the arrival of their new neighbors, Arnie and Rose Goldenstein. Amazingly, eight episodes were filmed and only one aired – all copies were thought to be destroyed until the pilot episode surfaced, hit the internet, and thus became property of mankind.

The show creator intended to satirize corny American sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver by using the lame jokes, insipid plots, and canned laughter, exacerbating the ridiculousness of it all by sticking Hitler in the lead. Trey Parker and Matt Stone used this same formula to some success a few years ago with That's My Bush. That didn't last long either, but at least it didn't star Hitler. Adolf and his Nazi companions are not exactly a rich source of comedy to the British.

The thing that offends me is that this simply isn't funny. I like TV-making-fun-of-TV, with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace currently filling the void in my heart left by Frisky Dingo's disappearance. But any way it gets sliced, Heil Honey is about as funny as pancreatic cancer. Like its successor That's My Bush, the only funny part about the show is the set-up – "Picture a sitcom, but with Hitler! Ha ha!" – leaving viewers bored stiff after 30 seconds when the effect of the Big Gag wears off.

We all know that I like offensive, off-color comedy. Two out of three won't do.

If Hannidate is just too liberal (or not quite enough of a sausage party) for you, relax. There is another dating service that can meet your needs.
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Head on over to TheAtlasphere.com – the premier dating site for Ayn Rand acolytes around the world – and take your pick of thousands of men who will probably chloroform you, cut off your legs, and do unspeakable things to your person. On the first date. A date which, not coincidentally, will not only be his first with you but possibly his first ever.

Here is a nice sample of TheAtlasphere's finer moments. My personal favorite is Lewis from London, a charming lad who notes:

I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking (but other fields are great too). Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children.

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I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.

How has some young lady not yet snapped you up, Lewis?

Then again, if Drew Peterson can reel in wife number five, I suppose Lewis is something of a catch.

(Thanks Matthew and Sylvia!)

As of September 8, 2008, it is once again legal to purchase, sell, and own Gambian Pouched Rats as pets in the United States. Gambians are the largest rats in the world, approximately the size of a house cat (weighing from three to nine pounds) and with a life expectancy of about eight years. Like all other rats, they are completely awesome. Imagine the kind of awesomeness obtainable from regular rats (see photo) and now imagine it…giant.

The rarely-observed "Hammock Double Nose Poke"

You're not sold yet? Well, they save a lot of lives. In Africa they are now widely used to detect landmines, which they do with 100% accuracy. They're better than metal detectors (Whoops!

Missed all the plastic mines.) and obviously more economical. They're easy to train, they never tire of the "game" of finding buried explosives, and, unlike sniffer dogs, they're too light to trip a mine. A single human and a metal detector can de-mine a 100 square yard area in about a week. A handler and a rat can do it in 20 minutes. If this seems like an obscure talent, outside of the comfy Western world landmines kill 60 people every day and cripple 200 more.

Yeah.

You're still not sold? They are being introduced into medical labs after trainers discovered that their noses can be used to detect diseases. Throughout Africa, tuberculosis still runs rampant. And a rat can be trained to respond to the smell.

If you're thinking, "But microscopic tuberculosis bacteria have no odor, silly" then you are obviously not a rat.
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A human using fairly expensive lab equipment (which, you know, Africa tends to lack) can test 50 samples for TB in about 48 hours. A rat can do 100 in 30 minutes. No mistakes.

Are you not on board yet? They can fuckin' smell tuberculosis. What does it take to impress you?
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Oh, how about this: they're being trained to smell cancer too.

You should check out this website from a non-profit group which trains these little balls of awesome to help resource-poor parts of Africa rid themselves of landmines strewn across the continent in seemingly endless conflicts and TB. A few bucks to help them out will probably save a couple kids from getting a leg blown off. And if you're really bored at work, check out the slideshow of how they're trained to de-mine. Pretty awesome.

Now excuse me, I have to find an exotic pet dealer.

Many years ago I worked in a very unpleasant and traditional "office job." In formulating my escape plan I initially wanted to go to graduate school and study/dissertate on the history of advertising. When I realized that this would entail joining a "cultural studies" or communication department I abruptly changed course. Really, one must salvage some dignity in academia. Nonetheless the topic remains fascinating to me. Advertising from 200, 100, 50, or even just a few years ago does not merely look dated or quaint – some of it looks like it was made on another planet.

Watching some old political ads on Thursday reminded me of the Rosser Reeves Hard Sell in all of its glory. Today's televised ads, even the ham-fisted ones, are incredibly subtle in comparison. An 18-wheeler barreling through a minefield is subtle compared to classic Reeves. While most people have no idea who he is (although I'll bet a quarter that some character on Mad Men is patterned after him) I can guarantee that everyone knows his work.

Reeves never believed that advertising could create demand. He regularly told his clients that he couldn't sell lousy products – the purpose of advertising was to increase demand by hammering home one point, one catchphrase, which summed up the "unique selling proposition" of a product. There are 50 different chocolate candies on the market, but M&Ms "melt in your mouth, not in your hand." There's a lot of aspirin, but Anacin is "what doctors recommend." "We like Ike" Eisenhower, the "Man from Abilene." Colgate creates an "invisible shield" around teeth. At Avis, "We Try Harder." Relief is spelled "R-O-L-A-I-D-S." Reeves created ad campaigns before the frickin' Korean War that can be recited flawlessly today by anyone who looked at a TV in the 1950s.

The amazing thing about Reeves and the Hard Sell, something which is apparent if you click through any of the links, is that people simply hated his ads. They're annoying as all hell. They consist of unappealing imagery paired with an announcer repetitively yelling at the viewer. Can you imagine a modern political ad screaming at you like "The Man from Abilene?" Reeves believed art, subtlety, cleverness, and style were for pussies. He thought that it didn't matter one bit if anyone enjoyed the ad. All that mattered was that those same people who said they hated the ads remembered them verbatim. The combination of repitition (few companies advertised on TV, hence a small group of commercials were in heavy rotation) and pointed delivery make Reeves' ads unusually enduring.

The Hard Sell fell out of favor in the 1960s when the prevailing philosophy in advertising shifted toward campaigns which tried to be cool, cinematic, artistic, and less "pitch-y." In other words, advertising that didn't look so much like advertising. Compared to the new Doyle-Dane-Bernbach style, which incorporated concepts like post-modernism and breaking down the fourth wall, Hard Sell ads began to look exceptionally corny (Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool goes into significant detail about the transition). It's the difference between a modern Volkswagen commercial and a Billy Mays ad for Mighty Putty. It's the difference between an Obama ad and this 1964 Goldwater ad warning viewers of "JUVENILE DELINQUENCY!"

Consumers began to tune out ads that insulted their intelligence with direct "BUY THIS NOW" appeals. So the Hard Sell disappeared. Right? Not so much. Ad execs may distance themselves from Reeves, recoiling at the mere implication that they would subscribe to the crass theories of a bygone era, but many modern ad campaigns incorporate all of his principles (albeit in a prettier package). No, the real change was in the products. There simply aren't enough things being advertised to us that have "unique selling propositions" – even phony, dubious, and pseudoscientific ones like we saw in the 1950s. What makes Nike unique? Nothing. It's a shoe. So are Reeboks. All shoes cover your feet. The only way to pitch Nike versus Adidas versus Reebok is on style points; look how "hip" our ad campaign is, look at the awesome celebrity spokespeople, look at how cool everyone will find you in our shoes. Accordingly, most products adopt a new campaign (and a new slogan) every 9 months lest they get "stale" and hence un-hip. In 50 years I can guarantee you that no one will remember McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" slogan – or "Food, Folks and Fun" or "We Love to See You Smile" or any of their dozens of slogans since 1990. But in 2058 I bet that people will still be able to state exactly where M&Ms melt and where no such melting occurs.