A friend of mine recently asked (hypothetically) if I’d like to be run marketing for the brand Sarah Palin. It’s an interesting thought experiment.
My answer? No. Too easy.
Here’s why. When she recently rewrote Paul Revere’s history by flat out making up shit, she demonstrated her usual incompetence and whoring political tactics. (Suffice to say I’m not a fan).
But she also stuck to a marketing plan that has been successful for all evangelical products.
See, evangelical products (religion, ideology) are not constrained by logic, reason or even the burdens of trade and proof. They never have to deliver, they only have to promise. Their markets don’t buy results, because the results are often unverifiable. (In fact, in most cases, the results are 100% false).
Doesn’t stop them one bit. These buyers are purchasing the promise, not the delivery. Hence, Sarah Palin can literally make up the most batshit rant her tiny mind can create, and as long as it uses the right words and evokes the correct emotions, her believers will gobble it up. I promise you for every eye rolling judgement of Ms. Palin’s silly and inaccurate banter, one more person decides reality is too complicated. To them, Palin’s irony-free stupidity feels safe.
For an interesting read on how spasms like Palin, Beck and Fox News can exist, read Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. He predicted all this madness in 1951.
That said, nothing cracks me up more than 10 minutes of Glenn Beck.
