The Rise and Fall of ObamaMarketing

In the summer of 2008, I noticed something I’d never seen before. All around midtown Manhattan, on various sidewalks, people were selling cheap plastic trinkets out of open briefcases propped atop folding tray tables.

To anyone who’s spent any time in New York City–where makeshift sidewalk vendors are more plentiful than Starbucks–that probably doesn’t sound so strange. But as someone who’s lived here since before the Reagan/Carter election, these vendors were different. Rather, the nature of what they sold was different.

Months before Barack Obama formally accepted the Democratic presidential nomination, the name “Obama” was already being stamped on or sewn into objects of every type, and these objects could be purchased just about anywhere you happened to be standing. Keychains, buttons, hats, t-shirts were all readily available. I saw Obama skateboards and heard rumors of Obama bongs. Eventually, companies usually seen selling things like pewter gnomes and porcelain kittens got into the game, hawking commemorative coins and Obama dinner plates on late-night cable shows.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Evan Coyne Maloney, Manhattan, mass-market advertisers, maura flynn
Posted Oct 13th 2009 at 9:15 am in Culture, Obama, Politics | 1595480 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/emaloney/2009/10/13/the-rise-and-fall-of-obamamarketing/The+Rise+and+Fall+of+ObamaMarketing2009-10-13+16%3A15%3A00Evan+Coyne+Maloney

ACORN, Kanye West and the Hierarchy of Multiculturalism

Journalists need to ask themselves, how did this happen? How could they miss the corruption at ACORN? President Obama was once an ACORN lawyer, so the group is certainly significant enough to warrant media scrutiny. Then how did all the seasoned professionals get scooped by two students–James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles–one of whom isn’t old enough to legally drink?

ACORN’s many problems have been well known for quite a while, at least to anyone venturing beyond network newscasts and liberal blogs. As an organization, ACORN doesn’t just limit itself to churning out forged voter registrations. It’s a full-blown racketeering enterprise worthy of The Sopranos, and it finances its operations with the help of taxpayer money.

So how could the major media fail to hold ACORN to account all these years?

I have my pet theory.

Political correctness has been slowly rotting the establishment media to its core, to the point where few professional journalists would dare launch a serious investigation into the exalted Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now. Why? Simple: according to the tenets of political correctness, the racial makeup of the communities being “organized” automatically confers the presumption of moral superiority upon ACORN. So all those nasty rumors about ACORN must be no more than lies spread by racist propagandists.

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Tags: ACORN, acorn prostitute video, acorn scandal, BigGovernment.com, Bill Clinton
Posted Sep 19th 2009 at 10:00 am in ACORN, Culture, Media Criticism, Obama, Politics | 5250186 Commentshttp://biggovernment.com/emaloney/2009/09/19/acorn-kanye-west-and-the-hierarchy-of-multiculturalism/ACORN%2C+Kanye+West+and+the+Hierarchy+of+Multiculturalism2009-09-19+17%3A00%3A13Evan+Coyne+Maloney