Our Man In Pennsylvania – Inside and Outside Two Rallies

The two bumper sticker shots amaze.
First the Caddy: obviously he/she owns or has a buddy with a printing press. Can’t print white on my inkjet anyway. And he’s decidedly on message with McCain negativity and lack of issues/identity. This “attack” launches from what the other guy has to say. Has to be an attack if you’re riding a Caddy, right?
The copy? Though not the intent, sure seems like Biden is pretty damn important to people who ride in this Caddy.
Oh, was Biden running against Obama? Is that it now? Ah, I see.
Then he tries to squeeze too much stuff in on the other side, ending with the rallying cry of “McCain will do that!” Do what? Mess up your Caddy?
The truck may be more special. We get to win if we throw around a lot of “terrorists” don’t we? I note that Helvetica Rounded sorta suggests that the wife really made the posters, or maybe it’s her truck (and a nice typeface for Obama I might add, but it plays better much larger–maybe she has some secret hopes of her own).
Note that: There will be no opening the hitch till the damn thing is settled!
They broke out the fine expensive red ink on the McCain side, well for a few alternating letters. And, BUMMER, after all that detail work, when they masking-taped it in place they had to cover up part of maverick.
Army of One (“Blouch-2″) and the Cad are both sorta passionate with nearly coherent messages–like you’d expect from maybe PR interns on their first day at the PA GOP state senate committee meeting or such, but they are so worked up, they can’t even hang ‘em straight, line up the type, or do it over so it makes sense and fits. So filled with GOP rage they deface their own cars. Yep.
Sure hope nobody gets rear ended while they try to read/figure out what the hell either are saying.

BTW, is she really wearing a “shit happens” shirt in that last? (while wielding hockey stick).
Need a giant copy of that. Everyone does. Stat.

The level of… tastelessness astounds me. Not just in the political rhetoric (that’s all conservatives are good at) but the clothing and the masking tape of printed signs among other things.
I always wonder what fantasy it is that conservatives have in their head about what their country is SUPPOSED to be, or better yet, what exactly is it that they envision for the future of their country. I am not sure they really think like that or that far ahead. A modern conservative political rally seems to be almost entirely about some mythical Us vs Them, and the viciousness gets worse the weaker they become.

Overwhelming weirdness.
In the last one, if you ignore the “Ship Happens” T-shirt and just see Sarah as the letter I, the levitating hat on one side and the hockey stick on the other complete the word “oil”.

Pssst. The last image. “Our Man In Pennsylvania. October 2006″…not 2008.
The secret service agent in 12 looks as though he’s wondering “Who the hell did I piss off to get this assignment?”

I do wonder where the designer wardrobe is right now. If the campaign poobahs hadn’t been so in thrall to anti-intellectualism, they might have recalled Thoreau’s warning: “Beware all enterprises that require new clothes.”

There seems to be a discernible amount of *bitterness* floating around in these shots. I’m not sure that the prayer thing is such a good idea for democratic elections seeing as how the Creator of the Universe isn’t registered to vote. It would be more effective to throw one’s energies into convincing your neighbors that voting your way is in their interest. Resorting to prayer at this stage of the game seems like a form of surrender. I see more bitterness in the very near future.

Can we please just stop all this nonsense speculation that McCain is angry because he doesn’t really want to be running this type of campaign? When I see him on Meet the Press, in rallies etc. he seems pretty comfortable with his nastiness. He laughs at his own mean little jokes, bares his teeth, crosses his arms and seems pretty damn self-satisfied. Most notable being his affirmation of the “Obama will harm your kids” commercial and the “so-called health of the mother” dismissal. This McCain we are watching is who he really is. He could have run a different campaign–he chose not to. Instead he hired the very worst of the Atwater/Rove hit men.

It strikes me that 2008 represents a distillation of the 2004 Republican base. The fear voter. As if that base has been boiled down to its bare core elements. Chin seems to bring that out with amazing clarity.

The glum men surrounding Palin in the “Ship Happens” photo, particularly the black man to her left almost directly across from the disembodied empty pink hat. Amazing.

These are the folks putting “10 out of 10 terrorists support Obama” (with a picture of Bin Laden) stickers on every stop sign near my house. Nov. 5 could be very scary day. These people are either going to take their racism and hatred of liberals and crawl back into their caves, or… I don’t know. Gun sales have gone up 10 percent. All that hate is now out in the open, can they just pack it away now? They haven’t had to deal with a reality-based election in 8 years. If McCain doesn’t start making peace soon, I fear a very ugly period after Obama wins. Hopefully they (most of my family included) all go to Alaska and await the Rapture.
And yes, those are Alaska earrings. She looks pathetic in that picture, like she’s whining for a “do-over”. There’s going to be lots of whining from McCain/Palin on election day. I expect many lengthy legal challenges on Nov. 5, charges of fraud and stealing votes, anything to cripple Obama.

#8 looks like Larry the Cable Guy with a hangover.

On the Caddy home-made bumper sticker, they’ve got an unresolved reference in the last sentence. “Vote to save yourself and save America. McCain will do that.”
McCain will do what? Vote?
Heh.

I am enraged at how McPalin continue to cherish ignorance as an American virtue.

I’m not having the “bitterness” reaction that some of you are. The car decorations are a bit much, but that guy is not a “Larry the Cable Guy”, he’s just some guy. The whole thing seems kind of like a rock concert or a Steelers game. The fans bring posters to cheer for their team, to which they are loyal.
My favorite shot is the praying. I don’t mind Sarah Palin praying, I just wish she would talk less and listen more. That shot made her look worried, I think. As well she should be.
As for the bodyguards, they are busy doing their job, they aren’t going to be tied in to the mood of the moment. They had better not be.

I’m not that worried about violence after the election, by the way. There will likely be more of a grieving period. You know, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance. They already know what’s likely to happen and they are taking their best shot.
The thing that I find so notable is that these motives and political themes have not really been taken on directly and beaten in my entire lifetime, and I’m 52. Lyndon Johnson did not run on a platform of Civil Rights, busing, equal housing, etc. When Democrats are successful, they dodge these kind of issues and focus on economics. He ran on “Goldwater will get us all nuked”. The violence of the sixties is due, in part, to that. And to the war.
To me this is the beauty of the democratic process. They will have had their best shot, and by voting, have endorsed the outcome, even if they voted for the other guy.

I have to say that I find these photos pretty tame. The exception for me is the pickup tailgate (the caddy tailgate is so poorly conceived that I can’t muster any outrage at it.) I wonder if the “stop obama” sign is really home-made, or distributed by the campaign? I suspect the latter, which suggests that someone put some thought into it which makes the black and white block printing a bit more ominous. (stop obama from what? how?)
A lot of these pictures could have been taken at an Obama rally though. People looking up at a stage will always look sort of worshipful. Teenagers will look silly and boisterous. White guys in rural areas will wear cammo.
The black guy on the stage really does pop out. Is he Secret Service, as some have suggested? or one of the ubiquitous Token Black Conservatives who are trotted out at these things? I think black conservatives are great, I suspect that they do more to chase away white-racists from the party than they do to attract, well, anyone.

buskertype, your comments are well taken, but, in fact, the demographics of the people attending McCain/Palin rallies as opposed to Obama/Biden rallies really are different. Take a look at my photos from an Obama event in Pittsburgh the day before, and I think it will be obvious that very different kinds of people attend the respective campaigns.
For one, there is the matter of race. The black man in the photos with Palin is one of her Secret Service agents. Other than him, myself, a black TV camera man, an Asian student who spent his time at the event immersed in his textbooks, and perhaps one or two others that I or my colleagues spotted, there were only white people in the crowd of thousands.
Then there’s the “Stop Obama” sign — i think that it was home made and not manufactured by the McCain campaign — nowhere in any of the many Obama events that I’ve covered have I ever seen a “Stop McCain” sign or anything close to those bumper stickers, or those “NoBama” T-shirts, etc. For what it’s worth, the McCain/Palin crowds are animated by an anger against Obama that is entirely missing from the Obama camp. Now of course I am sure that many Democrats hate or disapprove of Republicans just as much as these Republicans here feel about Democrats. But they don’t show it in such an angry and negative way.
Finally, compare the “silly and boisterous” teenagers at the McCain/Palin rally with images of young people at Obama events. The latter might be accused of being effete hipsters or overly idealistic. But not belligerent and seething with rage, as these young men are.

I’m assuming that Sarah’s prayer gesture is a secret message to any prayer warriors or spiritual warfare ninjas to “Pray now! Pray hard!”

Wow! Good job Alan. I feel like i was there. I have seen these people on the other side of the street, counter-protesting at the local recruiting center. Hate filled, blood thirsty, aggressive and ignorant yahoos. It’s shocking to experience it in person and scary to suspect that some of them are professional agitators.
Thanks for your fine work.

The earring does appear to be a nugget in the shape of AK.
The home made car signs seem so much like four legs good two legs bad that it kinda creeps me out.
I don’t think people think like that, right up until the hot second that I see that they do.