And with the last presidential debate of 2012 comes the last debate related meme. It's kind of bitter sweet. I'm going to miss building up my week waiting for the next big thing the internet is going to draw from the fray.
Honestly, I was rather surprised that a political meme came out of the foreign policy debate as easily as it did. Though on the surface Obama and Romney might claim to have major differences in their plans for America as far as foreign policy is concerned, I don't believe they are that different, or at least not in terms of how they want to appeal to the public. Both want to come across as very strong, very able to deal with threats to America when/if they arise. They both aim to appeal to voters by being wary of Iran and China, concerned about Libya and Syria, and by showing unwavering support for Israel. So as far as their approach to dealing with any foreign issues is concerned, though they both may squabble over what's working and who has said what in the past and so forth, I don't believe either would do anything too differently. They're wary to use the military, but military force is not off the table. They want to negotiate for peace. They don't want jobs to go overseas. Yada yada yada.
And perhaps that is why the nature of the meme that has come out of third debate is so different, for while most of the memes so far in this debate have been drawn from gaffes, this one came from one of the candidates completely meaning what they said, and probably knowing that the audience would respond well. Here's a clip showing that moment in the debate.
*Zing*
Correct me if you think I'm overstating this, but you have to hand it to the president here for being quite the tactician. He took what had seemed to be a strong point by Romney, turned it on its head, and stuck it right back at Romney in a blistering, ad hominem fashion. Romney never got a chance to defend himself or respond, and even if he did, he probably would have had to do so by at least partially retracting his previous statement, which would have come off across as weak. Regardless, Romney took a blow. Now, all of a sudden, the internet believes confusing foreign policy with a game of battleship is part of the Romney agenda...
and that he actually wants more more horses and bayonets in the military. It was also unfortunate for the Romney campaign that this picture of Romney riding a horse was already available, just begging to be photoshopped.
Now, because this meme came directly from what one of the candidates said, as opposed to taking something they said or did and reinterpreting that against them, I feel that it does deviate from Post It Politics's main theme of guerrilla strategies in political imagery (or how of applying alternative meaning to already existing images redirects political dialogue). However, one must consider how smears like this one by Obama, no matter how deftly they're done, are guerrilla-ish. I mean, I don't want to get all metaphysical on you or something, but in this last debate, at that moment, Obama took Romney's overall image, removed all of its good qualities, and reduced it to nothing more than a bayonet. And, as this Gallup poll shows, the public responded. Despite having no clear differences between them, Obama came out of this debate with 56% approval from independents, while Romney only had 27%.Honestly, I was rather surprised that a political meme came out of the foreign policy debate as easily as it did. Though on the surface Obama and Romney might claim to have major differences in their plans for America as far as foreign policy is concerned, I don't believe they are that different, or at least not in terms of how they want to appeal to the public. Both want to come across as very strong, very able to deal with threats to America when/if they arise. They both aim to appeal to voters by being wary of Iran and China, concerned about Libya and Syria, and by showing unwavering support for Israel. So as far as their approach to dealing with any foreign issues is concerned, though they both may squabble over what's working and who has said what in the past and so forth, I don't believe either would do anything too differently. They're wary to use the military, but military force is not off the table. They want to negotiate for peace. They don't want jobs to go overseas. Yada yada yada.
And perhaps that is why the nature of the meme that has come out of third debate is so different, for while most of the memes so far in this debate have been drawn from gaffes, this one came from one of the candidates completely meaning what they said, and probably knowing that the audience would respond well. Here's a clip showing that moment in the debate.
*Zing*
Correct me if you think I'm overstating this, but you have to hand it to the president here for being quite the tactician. He took what had seemed to be a strong point by Romney, turned it on its head, and stuck it right back at Romney in a blistering, ad hominem fashion. Romney never got a chance to defend himself or respond, and even if he did, he probably would have had to do so by at least partially retracting his previous statement, which would have come off across as weak. Regardless, Romney took a blow. Now, all of a sudden, the internet believes confusing foreign policy with a game of battleship is part of the Romney agenda...
and that he actually wants more more horses and bayonets in the military. It was also unfortunate for the Romney campaign that this picture of Romney riding a horse was already available, just begging to be photoshopped.
And thus concludes the 2012 debates, which I believe should forever go down in history as when three (or five if you count the VP debate) images seemingly replaced the significance of every issue discussed. And lo and behold, it seems that even the meme creators agree with me.
I do appreciate this next one. Simplifying this elections key points into a children's book format is a nice touch.
And this next gif is a worthwhile commentary on what these have (seemingly) reduced much of the electorate to.
Now, all we can do is wait and see what the next 12 days have in store. More memes perhaps? We'll see ;)
Ok, so reporting in on the actual running of Post It Politics. I can now report the results from my mass campus wide posting that I previewed on Tuesday. I went to nearly every academic building on campus looking for bulletin boards with material for either the Dream Act Rally (that happened earlier today) or that remained from the Marriage Equality Rally that happened two weeks ago. While doing this, I also happened upon some materials urging us to rethink drug policies here in the US that were posted by both the Students for Sensible Drug Policy and the Students for Liberty here in College Park.
All in all, I ended up posting on 36 fliers around campus, not too shabby in my opinion. My main purpose was to just get my image out there, put it on some people's radars. I'll have to see whether or not that actually works by monitoring my Twitter account, and also keeping an eye out for other signs of familiarity (people posting on their own, talking about it, asking about it, etc.). But of course, I also wanted to see how people responded.
In the end, based completely on how my coin flipped, I posted up 13 times, and down 23 times (maybe my coin had a really negative temperament, I don't know). When I went back to check up on my handiwork, 9 of my up thumbs remained, and only 8 of my down thumbs. The rest had been removed or changed. Here let's break down the data.
*Also, I must admit, the gathering of this data has been rough. Many of the posts that I made/much of the data collection was done quickly and has sometimes proved hard to track down. And some thumbs may have been changed, then removed, further complicating things. Therefore, some of these numbers are close estimates. But hey, IRB told me that I'm not technically doing research, so I'll let myself get away with it.
**I would also like to note that many if not most of these posts were done in the Biology-Psychology Building. I swear, there are more bulletin boards in there than bare wall space. Probably because of how often they are looking for test subjects...
Now, too be fair, the number of thumbs removed may be exaggerated. Many of the thumbs posted on fliers for the Marriage Equality Rally were taken down along with the flier itself because of how old they are. Of the 15 down thumbs that were missing, I'd say about 8 where taken down with the flier itself. This probably also accounts for two of the missing up thumbs.
Here are some general observations about these images
- Not once was there an image that had been flipped like the one on the display case from last Tuesday. I imagine this may be because of the reasons I discussed in that blog (display case, Obama, etc.)
- Thumbs posted in buildings where lots of social science/humanities classes are held featured more activity. Only 1 thumb posted in a science heavy building was taken down (though, to be fair, this could be because of a small sample size. It's really hard to find political stuff to post on in math and science buildings)
- Thumbs of any kind near faculty office bulletin boards were taken down. Maybe they just don't like clutter.
- 4 thumbs had been altered, but none of them had been posted back on to material. Sometimes, people would even remove the flier, but take the Post-it and stick it back on the bulletin board. However, they'd put it back with disregard for how the thumb was originally posted.
- One really unique instance was when I posted down on two fliers side by side, one post against marriage equality, one against the Dream Act. When I checked back, the post against marriage equality was gone with the flier still up, but the one against the Dream Act remained. It could be that the first one just fell off, but if not, this could say something about the posting community. (Or not. It's really hard to qualify stuff like this when you can't quantify it first...)
So, I shall post on. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for the less than 40% survival rate for thumbs down. Keep an eye out for my postings/things to post on.
Lastly, a member of YAF finally did get back to me regarding No More Che Day. I will report back to you next week regarding any info I receive.
For now, enjoy the election home stretch!
