After just a few days of managing to stick with my internet break, my mental hologram of what’s going on in the world has completely collapsed. Well, almost. I managed to get a glimpse of that Absolut ad on the front page of a local paper – the one with the American Southwest absorbed into Mexico. I can imagine the shitstorm that must have caused in the political blogosphere, and when I say “imagine”, I mean I can pretty much predict word for word any particular pundit’s reaction to it – from James Lileks, Michelle Malkin and Mark Steyn to Atrios and Blue Texan and Tbogg. How pathetic is that? It’s like you get to the point where actually reading political blogs becomes redundant once you have that internalized template of how people react to things. The only thing I would love to have seen with my own eyes is poor Lou Dobbs’ expression the first moment he saw it.
For myself, I think the ad is funny, and it doesn’t come as any particular surprise that multinational corporations target ads to specific national demographics. If Absolut had run an ad showing a map of North America with half of Canada absorbed into the United States, 90% of conservative pundits would have laughed themselves into the emergency room with ruptured abdominal walls. Down here, the whole idea of the “Reconquista” is seen as an absurd joke, and that’s what Absolut was playing to. You know: humor. That illogical human concept again.
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