Ron Popeil and the Left
I was deeply shocked at age sixteen when I discovered that half of my relatives were complete idiots. I was just starting to develop my sense of discrimination. By that I mean the cognitive development that allows the human mind to affix a value on things and ideas. I was sitting in my uncle's basement apartment surrounded by the flotsam of his life. He owned at least one of everything ever marketed by Ron Popeil. Most of it was junk and all of it was broken. My uncle was a security guard who had chosen his profession so that he could get paid for watching late-night television.
A few years later I was assigned a college roommate majoring in business. His passion was advertising. It wasn't long before I understood most of the principles of the trade. "You see," he explained, "the secret to Ron Popeil is that the product doesn't matter. He's selling bargains to morons. Seriously, who do you suppose is watching Batman re-runs after midnight?" Um, my uncle. "But wait, there's more!" I stammered. Precisely. Only nothing Ron Popeil ever sold had any value, except for the concept of the bargain itself.
Today's leftist-progressive agenda relies on the same marketing technique that Ron Popeil pioneered so many decades ago. Only they've taken it one step better because there's no tangible product to fall apart in your hands right out of the box. Let's just cut to the chase and sell the idea instead! It won't matter if the idea is junk because indiscriminate people will buy anything. And it's harder to detect a broken idea than to know your salad spinner is busted.
Today the leftist agenda is based on the sale of self-esteem: "If you buy this idea, you'll be a better person for it." Who knew there was so much filthy lucre to be made from moral vanity? The left's sales program makes Ron Popeil look like a piker. The entire line of phony products from gender studies, to global warming, to racial discrimination is designed to make the purchaser feel righteous. The one thing you need to ensure as a salesman is that your clientele never develops a sense of value based on discrimination. "You're being discriminatory" is now a pejorative where formerly it was considered a high compliment, as in "he has a discriminating palate."
The most insidious part of the left's marketing strategy is that it begins in our elementary schools. The process is then extended into the teenage years and completed in college. Children are by nature idealists, so why not sell them what they crave? Junk ideas that are easily digestible and make them feel good. Kinda like sugar-coated cereal only it doesn't rot your teeth. So, if you're wondering why you can't win an argument with a liberal, it's because they are addicted to nonsense. If you take away their addiction, you only make them feel bad.
There's one more thing the left knows. The best product can be recycled over and over like diet regimens that never work. There will always be people who demand moral flattery just like there will always be fat people desperate to lose weight. The next version is always new and improved (see "global warming" now marketed under "climate change"), but it's all part of the same program. Ron Popeil eat your heart out. You piker.
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May '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Trolling for votes with the Pocket Fisherman...
Nov '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Good post, and I think you're really on to something. Perhaps that's why modern liberalism is such a seductive political philosophy for young people. Part of the "feeling good" is feeling morally superior. It's a pseudo-superiority, of course, but, as you wrote, it's not based on a "discriminating" taste, but on pseudo-intellectual ideas. It's seductive because in the light of many of our public institutions (media, entertainment, intelligentsia, academia) all a young person must do is profess to be a liberal and he is automatically assumed to be intellectually superior, morally superior, more discerning, more nuanced, and most of all, more enlightened. All the while, the person's knowledge if superficial, at best, but he can quote those platitudes & bromides. To be young and profess conservatism is to have to know what you're talking about and how to defend it against leftist attack. It is also, sadly, often to fail the cocktail party test (we can't have unseemly conservative troglodytes at parties, they wouldn't go along with our pseudo-superior worldveiw about which we incessantly preen and on which we do not accept challenge).
Anyway, good post. Thanks. Cheers!
Mar '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Thoughtful post, but I will brook no criticism of the Veg-O-Matic; I'm getting verklempt right now at the thought of all my onions chopped to perfection without a single tear. Which I guess defeats the purpose . . .
Jul '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
But wait, there's more!
Because if you act now, you won't pay a dime, because it will all be financed by someone else's money!
Apr '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
That leftist politics has a quasi-religious function of justifying the believer as a virtuous person, without requiring very much effort by the ordinary believer has been much noted (See, e.g., Sowell's Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as as Basis for Social Policy and the title essay in Tom Wolfe's Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine.)
But your Ron Popeil marketing strategy explains why people keep buying the new item even as the last gadget crumples in their hand. It also explains the implacable, shark-like never-stop quality to the Left's efforts. They aren't selling the policies, they're selling the bargain, the rational, efficient, once-started-always-works policy that will make everything better. How can a supporter be anything other virtuous?
Underlying that hope is an inhuman world-view and driving it is a monstrous narcissistic egotism. The left loves to project their psychology onto businessmen, military officers, etc., but in reality, business and war force you to pause and re-examine policies that aren't working. Liberal's almost never do that.
Apr '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Validation of moral probity + a steady government check. What could possibly go wrong? Until you run out of other people's money, that is. Then, who will be blamed for our inability to keep our promises? Greedy, evil capitalists, that's who.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Outstanding post, this.
Dec '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
I predict a FREE!, no money down!, Encounter broadside in your future, ~Paules.
Great post.
Jun '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Complete the phrase:
Popeil tie protector is to priceless as CFL bulb is to _________.
Correct answer: doo doo
Ditto on the great post.
Oct '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Now and then, along comes a post that is simply to accurate for additional comment.
Thanks !!
Aug '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
What a crack-up. I'm wiping the tears from my eyes, but then, my gawd, you're right.
Now I'm sad.
What was it again I should do when this happens? Oh yeah. There's the mirror. OK.
I'm good enough. I'm smart enough. And gosh darn it, people...
Edited on Sep 29, 2011 at 2:35pmRe: Ron Popeil and the Left
~Paules:
The most insidious part of the left's marketing strategy is that it begins in our elementary schools. The process is then extended into the teenage years and completed in college. Children are by nature idealists, so why not sell them what they crave? Junk ideas that are easily digestible and make them feel good. Kinda like sugar-coated cereal only it doesn't rot your teeth. So, if you're wondering why you can't win an argument with a liberal, it's because they are addicted to nonsense. If you take away their addiction, you only make them feel bad. ·
This is the key. Consider the annual celebration in schools of Earth Day.
Jan '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
I'm thinking of the Left's cover-up of Fast & Furious, Solyndra, East Anglia Climate Data and juxtaposing it with that 'spray on hair'.
Government is a religion to these people, the most pious want more taxes & regulations.
This really was a great post.
Aug '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Great post Paules.
So if Obama is Popeil and Veg-o-matic
then only Biden can be Gallagher and Sledge-o-matic
Sep '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Best set of knives I've ever owned. Last forever, too. And I'm sure I'm not the only Mensa member who owns them.
Ron Popeil is a good Republican. His entrepreneurial business grew by leaps and bounds after the Reagan era FCC deregulated television advertising, making full length infomercials legal. That's right, Reagan didn't just win the cold war and fire the air traffic controllers, he also de-criminalized infomericals.
It's a free country. If your Uncle Fester wants to watch commercials all night and buy ant farms and bald spray, that's the kind of economic stimulus which doesn't cost tax payers a cent.
Don't knock Ron Popeil. The man never took a buck from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and he never priced his merchandise the way they do during PBS pledge drives, at ten times retail value.
Jun '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Liberals, even liberal atheists, believe in Heaven. They think they can create it here on Earth. But if you don't like their collectivist heaven, they'll make your life a living hell. That'll teach you to complain about Utopia. Admit that you can't possibly exist without their "help," or they'll beat the crap out of you.
Jun '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Paules, That was great. Especially, "Today the leftist agenda is based on the sale of self-esteem: "If you buy this idea, you'll be a better person for it." Who knew there was so much filthy lucre to be made from moral vanity?"
The binding of personal morality - of Identity - with bogus political ideas is something I've been trying to work around with my liberals for years. Any evidence that a cherished meme is false is interpreted as an attack on the person not the idea.
Jul '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
At least with Mr. Popeil's products You got something tangible for Yer money.
With Obama and the libs I think more in the line of Tony Robbins.
Sep '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
I understand what you're saying, but I've got to agree with Kearney. Don't knock Ron Popeil! Anyone interested should read Malcolm Gladwell's profile of Mr. Popeil:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Dog-Saw-Other-Adventures/dp/0316076201/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317336314&sr=1-1#_
"The pocket fisherman isn't for using, it's for giving."
We conservatives never try to "sell" our ideas, while every leftist proposal is put forward on moral terms (they all think they're Wilberforce). No wonder we lose so often.
Oct '10
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
~Paules, this perspective is inspired. As Bertie Wooster might put it, you've obviously been eating a lot of fish.
Jan '11
Re: Ron Popeil and the Left
Great post. Thanks for sharing. My 3 bucks and change should be forwarded to you for October. Your post also contradicts the stereotype that people who's name contains punctuation are dimwitted and slow.