Comment by dejan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dejan | Hacker News Reader

ok, I will respectfully disagree with most of you here, as there is nothing "comical" about it.

This made me officially sick, although so far had high opinion of them. I didn't get the joke of "french" font, and "hard working americans." I feel...insulted, as this is a way how to promote stupidity and national hatred. The guy wrote a book, and just because it is one position higher, he is a subject of an attack like this. Did they even read his book? No, it was easier to search the internet of a guy who didn't like it and quote it.

Maybe tomorrow it is >you< there, with your book, or your product. Or me?

Wasn't the content that mattered? I've seen excerpts from Rework and feel this is a toilet book. Inarticulate and arrogant, I know it all style, but I don't go making a video comparing their book with e.g. Re-Imagine by Tom Peters.

Tom has an attitude, but not an insulting one, but of a creative energy, an innovative arrogance that he wishes to spread.

Again, it could be just me. I would never smack Americans with "All European/Asian/African" labels. Nationality, religion and all other kinds of divide are elements of mediocrity. Real hackers should know that.

I think you're missing a big portion of the picture. They're not just picking on some random guy. Karl Rove is a big-time political figure in the US and is generally regarded as a slimy neoconservative. He invented nasty political strategies like the ones being parodied in this ad. He played a big role in pretty much every single unpopular policy from the previous decade, and then some. As for why they poked fun at a French font, maybe this will help:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

I didn't get the joke of "french" font, and "hard working americans."

You don't remember "Freedom fries"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_fries

It's called parody and satire. Real hackers enjoy a creative social "hack" as much as the next guy.

[edit] artists & writers used parody and satire to make the society a better place. I find it inadequate, mentioning the same in the context of advertising.

And..it's not, if you are a part of the labeling, or a victim of that hack.

Dont' be so touchy. They aren't degrading the French. They are making fun of conservative attack dogs that blame things on France. Showing how ridiculous something like this is through humor can make society a better place.

Honest question: are you an American? Have you seen the stereotypical "attack ads" that show up before every election? Do you know who Karl Rove is?

If not, I can see why you wouldn't get it, and the ad isn't targeted at you.

I'm glad a person can have an own opinion here =)

Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad.

This is not an attack ad, it's a satire of an attack ad. Taken literally, yes, it's pretty stupid--attack ads generally are. But that's missing the point.

> Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad.

No, he didn't.

Attack ads predate both TV and radio and were run on both almost immediately after they became available.

Rove learned most, if not all, of his tricks from Lee Atwater, who was the Karl Rove of the Reagan/Bush era.

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger"—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."

There's a superb documentary called Boogie Man about Atwater, who died horribly and spent his last years seeking out everyone he had wronged with his ads and asking for their forgiveness. He was an amazing, contradictory character, a larger-than-life sort who holds far more interest than the pusillanimous toady Rove. I watched that documentary late at night in a hotel room during the 2008 campaign; I was on a consulting trip and had to get up early the next morning, but I couldn't turn it off. It explains a great deal about how all that dirt became commonplace.

Yeah, it's an amazing hilarious movie and those guys did it totally independent and then sold it to TV. Buy a DVD on their website (i Did) because it has killer bonus features too and i'm into supporting the Little Guy. www.BoogieManFilm.com

Whoever did Johnson's ads was a real piece of work.

However, as I wrote, none of this stuff is new. It predates TV and radio.

Heck, it even predates moveable type.

Karl Rove practically invented the attack ad. Most people here are probably too young to remember it, but in the 1964 US presidential election Johnson attacked Goldwater as a warmonger who was going to get us all killed in a war. He ran an ad that showed the cutest little girl standing in a field of grass holding a flower anad picking petals. Birds chirping. Then you see a mushroom cloud in the distance and, a moment later, the little sweetie is anihilated on camera for your greater edification. (He won the election.)

In a fine piece of irony, it was Johnson, of course, who would later, following Kennedy (and against Eisenhower's approach), dramatically ramp up American involvement in the Vietnam war and get 55,000 Americans killed.

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