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The Motto of Mad Men
2010's most effective mad men come from Main Street and are literally angry men--specifically, the tea party crowd.
For most of us, conjuring concise and cogent catchphrases is nearly impossible. In fact, the skill can seem like the black magic of mystical mad men.
During the 1960s, the most influential of these Svengalis were the executives working in Madison Avenue advertising firms. By contrast, 2010’s most effective mad men come from Main Street and are literally angry men–specifically, the tea party crowd that is, according to new polls, more wealthy, more white, more male, more Republican and more motivated by racial resentment than the general population. And though their jeans and baseball caps are less stylish than Don Draper’s suits and fedoras, these anti-government activists deserve recognition: They have crafted a motto as succinctly expressive and manipulative as the best Sterling Cooper innovation.
“I Want My Country Back”–this ubiquitous tea party mantra belongs next to Nike’s “Just Do It” on Ad Age’s list of the most transcendent idioms. In just five words, it perfectly captures the era’s conservative backlash. Take a moment to ponder the slogan’s phrase-by-phrase etymology:
“I Want”–Humanity’s most atavistic exclamation of selfishness–and thus an appropriate introduction for a tea party motto – this caveman grunt may end up being the epitaph on the nation’s tombstone. America once flourished by valuing what “we” – as in We the People–need (food, shelter, infrastructure, etc.). Conversely, today’s America teeters thanks to a Reagan-infused zeitgeist that reoriented us to worship whatever I the Person wants. High-income tax breaks, smog-belching SUVs, cavernous McMansions carved into pristine wilderness – it doesn’t matter how frivolous the individual craving or how detached it is from necessity. What matters is that the “I” now assumes an entitled right to any desire irrespective of its affront to the allegedly Marxist “we.”
“My Country”–In his quintessentially American ditty, Woody Guthrie said, “This land was made for you and me.” It made sense. In a democracy, the country is We the People’s–i.e., everybody’s. If, over time, our diversifying complexion and changing attitude creates political shifts, that’s OK–because it’s not “my country” or “your country”; it’s all of ours. Apparently, though, this principle is no longer sacred. Following two elections that saw conservative ideology rejected, tea party activists have resorted to declaring that there can only be one kind of country–theirs.
“Back”–To underscore feelings of grievance and nostalgia, the slogan ends with a word deliberately implying both theft and resurrection. In tea party mythology, “back” means taking back a political system that was supposedly pilfered (even though it was taken via legitimate elections) and then going back to a time that seems ideal. As one tea party leader told The New York Times: “Things we had in the ’50s were better.”
To the tea party demographic, this certainly rings true. Yes, in apartheid America circa 1950, rich white males were more socially and economically privileged relative to other groups than they are even now. Of course, for those least likely to support the tea party – read: minorities – the ’50s were, ahem, not so great, considering the decade’s brutal intensification of Jim Crow.
But then, that’s the marketing virtuosity of the “I Want My Country Back” slogan. A motto that would be called treasonous if uttered by throngs of blacks, Latinos or Native Americans has been deftly sculpted by conservatives into an accepted clarion call for white power. Cloaked in the proud patois of patriotism and protest, the refrain has become a dog whistle to a Caucasian population that feels threatened by impending demographic and public policy changes.
As a marketing masterpiece, the slogan would certainly impress the old Madison Avenue mavens. The trouble is that as a larger political ideology, its hateful and divisive message is encouraging ever more misguided madness.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
David Sirota, an In These Times senior editor and syndicated columnist, is a bestselling author whose book Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now—Our Culture, Our Politics, Our Everything was released in March of 2011. Sirota, whose previous books include The Uprising and Hostile Takeover, hosts the morning show on AM760 in Denver. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com or follow him on Twitter @davidsirota.
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Reader Comments
Way to go again, David…
Paint anyone who’s dissatisfied with the government, who wants to stop border violation or has lost his job as a racist.
Generalization as in “more wealthy, more white, more male, more Republican” is OK. Right?
Good way to keep the status quo in government.
Posted by whattheheck on May 8, 2010 at 9:23 AM
I often said during the 2008 Presidential campaign that John McCain was “stuck” in the late 60’s, a time of war protest and social reform not to his liking. He and America lost in Vietnam, and Americans to this day repress that fact. But some of his generation are “still fighting” Vietnam, fighting against any voice or force of protest that contains echoes from those times. More than ever, today and tomorrow are times of unparalleled transformation, and accordingly, provoke unparalleled expressions of resistance to change that in instances take irrational and sociopathic dimensions.
This leads me into Tea Parties, the American reactionaries and Sarah Palin. Political slogans are most carefully crafted short epithets (preferably 3-4 monosyllabic words). Any layperson’s history on the role of Mad Ave and political campaigns should begin with Joe McGinnis’ 1968 primer on the Nixon campaign, The Selling of the President. But the role played by Mad Ave in socio-political engineering, of course, goes back much further, albeit not in the refined and codified forms that emerged since 1968.
It is incorrect to believe that an encapsulated description of the makeup of Tea Party members is a “generalization”. If statistical surveys reveal that the composition of a group is mostly white, male and affluent, then it is considered a demographic makeup of the group. An interpretation of the “mindset” of the group, however, how they feel, interpret events and why they react as they do is a psychographic - a very gray area for even marketers to master. But political slogans can be “reversed engineered” to detect the underlying psychographic.
Books can be written detailing the subliminal mechanisms at work in any given political slogan. But to take recent examples, the “Poster that Won the Election” for Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives in 1979 read: “Labour Isn’t Working”. Three words, true to two facts: mass unemployment in the UK, and the failure of the Labour Party to solve the issue. Brilliant! This was created by Saatchi and Saatchi, one of the largest advertising/PR agencies in the UK.
“It’s Morning In America”, resounded the 1984 Reagan counter-counter-culture victory. He declared victory over the forces of the 1960’s and grew a generation of Conservatives, some who have become the reactionaries of today. Campaign by Hal Riney, San Francisco.
To the present and “Drill, Baby Drill!” Sarah Palin is alluding to the original line in Adam Clayton Powell’s 1967 LP, “Burn Baby Burn”. This was a period of intense racial strife leading to, among others, the burning of sections of ghettoes during inner city riots. Clearly, though Palin is only a medium for the message, the subliminal thrust of this line is clearly racial and anti-1960’s. Additionally, it contains sexual and “Femdom” overtones.
A textbook example of winning through vagary is Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign where no slogan pointed to specifics, and all was left to interpretation. In my opinion, it may be the best example of a “Believing Is Seeing” approach to winning elections.
- Michael T Bucci
Posted by M Thomas on May 8, 2010 at 12:47 PM
M Thomas,
My objection was not to the “demographic makeup of the group”, rather to the conclusion we must be “racist”.
A large part of our problem is the pigeonholing of people who may have a different view on issues.
The religious extremist who want to kill those of any other opinion are different only in degree from those who slap labels on people protesting as a way to discredit their ideas.
When killers are on your lawn — I expect life becomes very specific and immediate.
As for Palin/Republicans trying to highjack the Tea Party stance — let Sen. Bennett be a warning shot.
Posted by whattheheck on May 9, 2010 at 7:22 AM
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