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Street Art, Pop Culture, and the Rise of Ted Cruz
Conservatives like to talk big about taking back the culture, but generally they suck at selling freedom. Having ruled pop culture for years, liberals tell their story by infusing everything from movies to visual art and music with their propaganda. Then, this happened:
Created in 2012 by the Republican street artist, Sabo, the “Ted Cruz with Tattoos” poster became culturally iconic for its frank and sexy message, and the fact that the liberal media tripped all over itself to promote it before they figured out that conservatives actually loved the image.
Shortly after, a secret confederacy of right-of-center marketing professionals in Los Angeles began producing their own political art. At first, the posters and paint jobs were confined to LA, but independent activists in other states began to use the posters locally, and one of the latest designs features Ted Cruz’s name with the Mockingjay style symbol made famous by the Hunger Games series.
The posters have made headlines from LA to Boulder, and most recently, Michigan State University students plastered 60 all over campus on the same day Mockingjay opened in theaters, inviting a direct comparison between the fictional Panem capitol and Washington D.C.:
So what’s going on here? An unabashed admirer of Cruz, Sabo creates many works to celebrate his favorite candidate, regardless of whether they will sell or not, and the “Mockingjay movement” operates outside of the structure of the Cruz political campaign. In other words, Cruz seems to be leading by example and inspiring something new to conservatism; rebellious fans and campaign volunteers are stepping outside the traditional norms, self-funding creative communications, telling their story and (with Cruz surging in Iowa) selling freedom very well indeed.
Published in Culture
We have very little practice being the counter-culture, it’s nice to see some talented people being the vanguard.
I think, generally, people suck at being Free, so They don’t want it.
Come on, Jimmy! You’re just hanging out with the wrong crowd.
Down with President Snowbama!
Ricochet or TEXAS?
If it’s posters and paintings, and not graffiti, I’m all for it. Graffiti is vandalism.
But when are we going to start seeing more of these around town?
Loved the tattooed cruz. Loved that it came from LA. Somewhere Andrew Breitbart is smiling.
TEXANS don’t suck at being free. Everyone else? Not so sure.
A much needed cool injection to a stolid but worthy man. He has guts and does not need to be liked. We need a lot more of that.
Normally I would agree, but what is up with that mayor down there who is afraid of white guys like me?
Which is ironic because we’ve been counter-culture for decades.
(I’ve always thought it funny that the people who proudly see themselves as counter-culture are quite mainstream in thought.)
Well…
http://freedominthe50states.org/
Meh, if their biggest knock in the “personal freedom” category is that they don’t allow a bunch of stoners to roam free, then I will agree with Brent on this one.
TKC, that’s Dallas. Dallas is the NYC to Austin’s San Fran. You can’t really get a good measure of TEXAS from Dallas. Trust me, I’m from there. Now I would rather be in Dallas than in Austin–the Leftists in Dallas are more apt to showering–but Dallas ain’t Fort Worth that’s for sure.
I bought a Cruz t-shirt (and one featuring Che Guevara – not flattering, I hasten to add) from the Unsavo
ury Agents store. The Cruz shirt is great, but I realize I don’t really have anywhere I want to wear the Che one…Exactly.
Ted of Cruzland?
The Cruzer ..
Freedom for the libertarians begins and ends with the right to do drugs, man!
Only for the junior high school libertarians .. for adults, it’s a Milton Firiedman thing, free to choose how to live ones life without interference from those who consider themselves superior and want to impose their choices on others.
Don’t forget to give The People’s Cube their share of the conservative graphic design kudos:
http://www.thepeoplescube.com
People’s Cube is funny, but I just showed the graphic to another conservative, who said, no, I don’t even want to read it….looks too busy. The genius of LA street artists is that they distill a concept down to an image that you can glance at, and then think about. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, “When you have a paragraph, and they have a bumper sticker, you lose, every time. Conservative activists are in the business of persuasion, and young people on a college campus are a tough crowd. What street art does is connect with them on their terms
If you look at the web site in the link, you will see that they look at freedom in a ton of different areas. Drug laws are a small portion of their overall picture. In comparing the states they measure fiscal responsibility, public debt, right to work, taxation, health insurance regulations, motorcycle helmet laws, eminent domain, homeschooling regulations, and many, many other things.
Don’t believe the propaganda, Bryan. There are plenty of people like myself who lean pretty strongly libertarian and have never even sampled illegal drugs.
I love that poster of my Senator. I think he should adopt the look with the cigarette – that will drive the nanny-state progs absolutely nuts.
Great stuff M!
Love it when young Conservatives make some noise.
Me too! These kids are not pajama boys
It’s been a long time since I watched even a part of a nominating convention, so things may have changed, but it used to be that the Democrats, despite their stifling conformity and thought control, would wave a variety of creative signs, many of them hand-made. Republicans, on the other hand, had pretty much all the same machine-made signs in red, white, and blue, which I presume had been manufactured upon the orders of the politburo and issued for the benefit of the cameras. I suppose it was more orderly, but it didn’t make me want to identify with those people.
Bryan, you continue to confuse libertarian and libertine and to promote authoritarian principles as conservative.
Libertarian and conservative principles overlap to a large extent while authoritarian and Leftist are practically synonyms.