mAd Men

Okay, I lied.  One last parting shot and then I’m closing down the pundit pavilion for a break.

Best Commercial for Meg Whitman to run this summer (now that she’s finished running those “Hi, I’m Meg Whitman as in E-Bay and not candy samplers and I’m willing to go so far to the right to win the Republican Gubernatorial primary that I’ve ended up in Arizona” ads):

Rose Bird.

That’s it.  No more hippy vans and  Summer of Love spots.  Just Rose Bird with historical reference.

As for Jerry “Hardest Working Man in California Politics” Brown,  the obvious ad  shows  large stretch limo drives down the blocks of  Rodeo Drive luxury shops, coming to a stop before a Gucci/Prada type establishment.  Two handsome matronly women dressed to the nines emerge from the limo and enter the store, chatting.  The blonder of the women is complaining about the fact that, now that she’s cashed out her billions from her business she just is having the hardest time finding things to fill her time.  The other woman expresses her sympathies for her friend’s plight.  As they peruse row after row of purses with four and five figure price tags the Blonde stops in front of one labeled “Governor of California” with a price tag of $150 million. She picks it up, looks at her friend and says, “Hey, I like this one.  What do you think?”  Her friend says, “Oh honey, it’s you.  And you certainly can afford it!”

And so the bored, rich Blonde woman walks to the checkout stand and buys the Governorship purse.  Throw in a voiceover asking if Californians are really going to let  a bored, rich Blonde woman basically buy the governorship and, voila,   the spot sells itself.

Of course the answer to that question come November may well be “Eh? Why not?”

Now, make the Blonde’s companion look oh-so Carly Fiorina and you have a two-fer commercial.  The Carly character can pick up a purse labeled “United States Senator” with a $50 million price tag and say “I think I’ll get one, too.”

Yo Barb and Jerry, ever thought about combining forces on this one?

And, to be fair to Carly, her ad against Barbara B. is simple as pie.

The US Capitol

With a simple voice over:  “With the highest unemployment levels in thirty-years does ANYONE working in this building deserve to keep THEIR jobs?”

(Admittedly, this is an ambidextrous spot useful to all challengers of both parties but, hey, if the spot fits.

Sianara  for a few more weeks.

Summer Hiatus

I’m not teaching this summer and have several projects in the works so I’m taking a recharging break from blogging.  I’ll probably get back to these funny pages by the end of July.  So I leave you for a while to while away the dog days of summer with these final lunacy-driven observations.

Primary Election 2010

Hey, what do you know?  Money doesn’t always win.  I mean, PG&E’s vanity Prop 16 failed despite millions in energizer monies the utility company unleashed.  The measure failed to pass by five  percentage points.  That’ll teach PG&E to try and win on the cheap.  Of course money did triumph with Prop 17 aka the “Win One For Mercury Insurance” initiative.  Yes, the good citizens of Mercury Insurance saw democracy triumph for them.  And all you military-types heading out of country to go in country Middle Eastern and Himalayan style?  Just be ready for nice hefty fees should you turn off your insurance while you trade in your Ford pickup for a Humvee for the next year.  Courtesy of the wise California voters, of course.  And, from what I heard, money did play a teensy-weensy role in helping the GOP CEO Corps crush the GOP Professional Brigade in the Gubernatorial and Senatorial primaries.  Then again, it could have been the hair styles….

And, as long as I’m bringing up the GOP Gubernatorial race,  I noticed Meg Whitman caught a little heat for launching straight into her partisan general election campaign during her victory speech on election night.  I disagree with the critics.  I thought launching her 2012 presidential bid that night was ABSOLUTELY brilliant.  You can’t let the grass grow and all that.  And if anyone thinks the most important election in the country this November in terms of its impact on the 2012 Presidential isn’t California’s governor’s race, they are wrong.  THAT is the one to watch.  I can only assume President-elect Whitman is already working on her inaugural speech

Okey dokey.  Toodles for now.

Up In Smoke

Happy 2010, y’all.  I’ve been hobbling around on a wrenched knee since New Years (its an old injury—never try to take down a 6’4”. Damn you, ’94 International Rugby finals…) so time and energy to blog has been limited.  My  first observation of the New Year is:  hats off to the City Council last week for putting off the inevitable yet again and delaying coming up with a  municipal set of rules for medicinal marijuana use by San Diegans.  (Wow, San Diego is now officially less progressive than New Jersey! I can’t wait for the City Council to take a position on Prohibition and Women’s voting rights…) 

I say inevitable because, I as lay supine last week, knee strapped and iced, it occurred to me that complete legalization  of devil weed, medicinal or otherwise, is only a matter of time.  We aging baby boomers will see to that, trust me.

You know us baby boomers.  We’re the  most spoiled, obnoxious generation in human history–the “I want it now, I want it all and when I’m done with it there won’t be anything left for anyone else” generation. (Kids, this is your Uncle Carl speaking in a moment of complete generational candor, so listen up.  If you really want an inheritance from your Boomer parents go out tonight, slip under their car and cut the brake lines.  Otherwise they will take your inheritance to the crypt,  Pharaoh style. Mayhap the people in Soylent Green had it right…) 

Boomers? Do you really think we Boomers are going to go into infirmity feeling any pain?  I mean, my knees are going out at the mid-century mark (oh,  why didn’t I run the down and out like Fouts told me to instead of going into the Bengal’s line.  Damn you, Freezer Bowl…).  What they’re going to like in twenty or thirty years doesn’t bear scrutiny.  And there is only so much OxyContin (Rush Limbaugh excepted, of course) or ibuprofen  you can take .   So as I and the rest of my Boomer cohort feel the pain of age, do you really think we won’t vote to legalize the substance that defined our generation from our parents’ in the first place?  Hell, in ten or twenty years Marijuana won’t just be legal, it will be subsidized under Medicare!  The children of the Baby Boomers will have to tell their children not to eat the brownies at grandma’s house and grandpa will spend all his time giggling in a rocking chair of the front porch.

So, kudos to the City Council for once again being at the cutting edge of being behind the times.  As for me and my knee,  for now I’ll be content deal with the pain the old fashion way—ice and Advil–as I internalize my first lesson of 2010:  Never chest bump someone younger and bigger than you on New Years Eve while dancing if you want to walk the next day.  Damn you, Chumbawamba!

Meanwhile, just what has the Governor been smoking lately?  Thinking the state should spend more on education than prisons? Sheesh.  How Cheech can you get.  And the Mayor tonight, telling everyone how the city is going to ride out its current fiscal shortfalls without some real, serious municipal pain?  That, my friends, is pure Chong.

The Man Who Would Be Kingmaker

Or, better yet as a title, Mitt Romney –You’re terminated. For the last year-most recently just eleven days ago—his Schwarzeneggerness was declaring that he wouldn’t endorse a GOP contender prior to the Fab Feb Five primary. Oh what a difference a fortnight makes. Or clear indications from South Carolina and Florida as to whom the GOP nominee will probably be.

The Terminator’s endorsement will play a strong role in helping John McCain win the state Tuesday. The core of the California Republican party sees McCain as a RINO at best, an outright liberal at worst (of course the right wing of the California GOP thinks Ghengis Khan was too progressive). But GOP moderates who voted for Arnold will be more than happy to darken an oval for the Gubenator’s new best political bud. Given McCain’s momentum coming into the Golden State and the increasing national perception of McCain as a politically dead man walking, Gentleman John Mc probably wins the state by a comfortable margin.

Smart move by our Barbarian Governor. Also a move I said he’d need to take last February. Principle and keeping to one’s word is one thing and doing the politically expedient thing can often be quite another. But ingratiating himself with McCain Schwarzenegger can take credit for delivering California if McCain wins the state. And if California puts McCain’s campaign over the top as the clear front runner of the party, Arnold can also claim the mantle of presidential king maker.

If McCain wins next November (unlikely) then Arnold has a pal in the White House whose IOU Arnold holds in his pocket. Or humidor, as the case may be. A McCain loss next November leaves Schwarzenegger the de facto power in the GOP as governor of the nation’s larger state. Either way, Arnold comes out of this a paramount national figure in the GOP. Which won’t hurt him come his run in 2010 against Barbara Boxer.

As Mel Brooks said, “It’s good to be the king.”

Birds of a Feather

What does the Gubenator and Gentleman Jerry have in common? Both are on the losing end of fiscal policy. What neither the politicians in Sacramento or San Diego were willing to accept was that the last two years were the good years in the tax revenue cycle and that the housing bubble bursting in 2007-2008, just like the dot.com bubble burst in 1999-2000, is going to take down their fiscal house of cards like Hurricane Katrina versus a Gulf Coast trailer park. It’s time we get use to the “R” word — recession — and with it renewed fiscal crisis. That’s my second “told you so” of the day.

The Senanator?

Speaking of Arnold the Rino (from my earlier post today) check out the The Politico exclusive interview with the Gubenator that just posted today. I’ve said for some time now it is inevitable that His Arnoldness, movie career moving rapidly into the retrospective, will eye another office after his bout as governor winds down. Given how much money he is raising, how high profile he remains, how high his approval rating is and the overall tone of the interview is that, come 2011, Arnold will reprise his role once again as the Running Man.

Two notes to the Gov:

1. Forgot about Mayor of LA. You are big time political star material. It’s the Senate you’ve got to play next.

2. Don’t sit on the fence come the California Primary. You can be the barbarian king-maker for either Giuliani or McCain — and whomever you deliver the Golden State to will owe you –big.