Ron Paul: The Apple of His Supporters’ Eyes
In the comments to my post ”All Your Thoughts Are Belong To Us,” “MS” (an appropriate pseudonym) remarked, “I’ll never understand why liberals like Apple so much. As if it’s the computer of the anti-establishment.” To which I replied, jokingly, that “I agree. Clearly, the Mac is the computer for intelligent conservatives.” (You can tell that it’s at least partly a joke, because both President Bush and Rush Limbaugh are among the “conservative” Mac users. On the other hand, Chronicles has long been produced on a Mac, and for five years now, our office has been entirely PC free.)
But if, as “Jet” correctly pointed out in the same comment thread, “I dont think its possible to define who uses what OS by political ideologies,” there does seem to be something of a correlation between political viewpoints and the use (or rather, reuse or mashup) of Apple’s TV commercials. The great “1984” ad, produced by Ridley Scott to introduce the original Macintosh, is an obvious target, and there are many versions out there with Hillary Clinton or Rudy Giuliani in the role of Big Brother. Not surprisingly, almost all end with an endorsement of Ron Paul.
But that’s low-hanging fruit. Somewhat more interesting is this parody of one of Apple’s “Switch” ads:
Or this (low-quality but funny) version of Apple’s more recent “I’m a Mac” ads:
And then, of course, there’s Apple’s second most famous ad campaign (behind “I’m a Mac"): the “Think Different” ads. They turn out to be perfect vehicles for promoting Ron Paul:
And once you’ve watched all of those, here’s a little bonus, Access Hollywood-style, featuring musician John Mayer (who frequently performs at Apple keynotes and product introductions) lecturing Justin Long, who plays the Mac in the “I’m a Mac” ads, on the constitutionalism of Ron Paul. Note Long’s very strange response of “Paul Wolfowitz” every time that Mayer mentions Ron Paul’s name:
All of which makes me wonder: Why haven’t the supporters of any candidate used a Microsoft commercial as the basis of a viral campaign ad?
2008 Election | Ron Paul
Comments
Good post. I know people who have worked for both Microsoft and Apple - both are extremely liberal companies, as are probably about 99% of companies in high tech. Ideology aside, Apple produces the better product. My G4, which I’ve had since 2001, is the best computer I’ve ever owned. It still runs well, never has shut down, and (knock on wood) as some life left to it.
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Mac & Windows fights are like watching conservatives and liberals statists fight about their proprietary, expensive, freedom-sucking OS. Any self-respecting, thinking, anti-establishment person runs Linux.
(Go to distrowatch.org. Try Fedora 8 it is so nice, powerful, easy and FREE!) Throw off your chains OS serfs!
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A couple of the images in the third commercial struck me as amusing, albeit in a dark and cynical way.
First off, the use of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima is a fake; As in the flag had already been raised and the photographer, Joe Rosenthal, requested the soldiers to take it down and re-erect it. How this image counts as “genius” or “changing the world” is beyond me. Genius maybe in that it is such a powerful piece of propaganda. World-changing maybe in that nobody wants to look critically at the trade embargo that, to the Japanese mentality, was viewed as betrayal by the United States. Which in turn led to Pearl Harbor, and U.S. engagement in the Pacific. I guess a photo of the burned corpses of little Okinawan children doesn’t depict the best side of the “Good War”. (For reading on Japanese history and culture I recommend a recent book by Nam-lin Hur - “Death and Social Order in Tokugawa Japan: Buddhism, Anti-Christianity, and the Danka System")
Secondly the image of the Lincoln memorial. Old honest Abe the great emancipator. Again nobody wants to critically analyze the events preceding the civil war - it couldn’t be possible that the South had every legitimate reason to secede. Lincoln did little more than set a precedent for the federal government to trounce upon the rights of the sovereign anytime, anyplace and by whatever means necessary; most often violently.
Why those two images in particular were chosen by the director to have any relevance to the campaign of Ron Paul I won’t speculate. Just two popular images that are in every high school American history text. Just two images in a slide show put to music, designed to evoke some sort of emotional response devoid of critical thought.
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