Obama the FLAMETHROWER! (UPDATED: With Banjo!)
This time last year, the Obama Store was teeming with customers. Ideally situated in the basement of Washington’s Union Station, the store was filled with consumers eager to buy anything with Obama’s likeness while others took pictures of the life-size cut-outs of the president and first lady. Now, the Obama Store is boarded up.
How quickly things change in a year.
The Obama Store was capitalism at its most brilliant rawness; find a market and exploit it quickly. The store made possible one-stop shopping for all of your tacky Obama merchandise needs. T-shirts! Hats! Calendars! Hand-warmers! Keychains! It was like something out of Spaceballs (“Obama: The Flame Thrower! The kids love this one.”). The store carried every imaginable product with the words “Obama” and “Commemorative,” except, notably, the Obama Chia Pet.
Doug Heye reminds us of what we already knew by demonstrating that, at least in the Mecca of Obamamania, the only color that matters…green…has stopped flowing for all things Obama. You have to wonder whether the small business entrepreneurs that opened the Obama Store are now cursing Obama’s policies that helped lead to their demise. ‘Hey…where’s my stimulus Obama!’
Admittedly, as Heye notes, “the closing of the Obama Store may not be due solely to Obama’s falling popularity. Perhaps the faltering economy (which Obama has nothing to do with, he keeps telling us) played a role.”
But:
[T]he store was ideally situated to make big profits. Not only was it in the District of Columbia, where Obama won 93 percent of the vote, but Union Station is swarmed by the most wallet-opening demographic of them all—tourists!
Obama merchandise is obviously a niche market with no real long-term prospects of success. The thing to take away from this is just how fast it all came crashing down. You may have thought Obama merchandising would have been a profitable enterprise for the duration of his presidency in November, 2008, and you would not have been considered a crank. But leave it to the object of your desire to beat you mercilessly into oblivion by alienating millions of people who voted for him and who may have continued to frequent establishments peddling wares emblazoned with his image.
He really is a slow learner.
Ultimately though it’s a lesson in the pitfalls of promoting a mortal as a deity. As far as I’m aware, sales of bibles haven’t stopped humming and yet, for some odd reason, ‘he who is the one we were waiting for’ can’t seem to keep a Union Station newsstand shop in business with the power of his being.
Go figure.
Heye’s conclusion is a good one:
This Valentine’s Day, visitors to Union Station who had hoped to express their love for a significant other with a $20 pink T-shirt of Barack and Michelle Obama in a heart-shaped picture commemorating the “Presidential Romance” (or T-shirts of Obama and Joe Biden commemorating the “Presidential Bromance,” for that matter) may now be unable to do so. That the Obama Store—which apparently received no stimulus money—has closed may be the most tangible sign yet that the honeymoon is over.
Back to plain ‘ol candy and flowers. What a drag.
Russ
h/t Reverend Guido McLovin
(Original post at February 4, 2010 at 12:49PM)
Russ
Russ
Steve, yeh the guy that puts up crazy speed, links us in his Friday night roundup.
Oh, and conveniently, leaves town while putting up a, yeh, violin solo.” Elitist!
Yeh, well…we ain’t all cussin’ and bullshit over here so…
“Drivers y’understand?”
Sorry. For this Jersey boy’s money, there’s nothin’ better than music. And on top’a that, there’s nothin’ better than Bluegrass music.
Let’s see Anastasia Khitruk try that shit.
uh-uh.
There’s talent…and there’s training.
There’s a big difference.
Steve knows that.
Do you?
Thanks Steve.
Russ
Oh I forgot…that’s not fuckin’ retarded.
Neither’s this guy.
“Come on..”
Russ
Lori at SnarkandBoobs has the perfect reaction:
Let me be clear, make no mistake: BWAA HAA HAA HAA!
Seconded.
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Reader Comments (2)
My oldest is one of those folks who can play any instrument he picks up within ten minutes of holding it. HE can do some things with a violin you might like... he does Nirvana, Green Day, etc. (His band is considering a grunge-rock retrospective, with violin in place of lead guitar.)
He also knows the banjo bit from Deliverance... I'm going to see if he'll record it on the violin. THAT might be amusing...
He's lucky. I have modest musical talent but I have to practice, which sucks. If he can hit the deliverance banjo on a violin, I'd post that here twice.
I was just bustin' chops. I really do like the violin. But I like it even more when you call it a "fiddle", a la Charlie Daniels.
I can't explain it, but there's just something about Bluegrass that gets my blood pumping like nothing else...except girls. Of course.