Watching the Vice Presidential debate on CNN, I couldn’t keep my eyes off the “little squiggly lines” (side note, every time Wolf said “little squiggly lines” I wanted to punch him in the throat. There has to be a better and smarter way to refer to a real time line graph. I know I 'm an American, but I’m not that stupid. But I digress) Obviously it was an insanely small sample, and has limited to no value as an indicator of general views of the overall, but…
Every time (seriously, every time) Sara Palin used the word “Maverick” The graph dived. Usually it recovered quickly to pre “Maverick” levels, but on the word itself it just tanked. This was throughout the debate, well before Biden went on his Maverick rant, so it’s not an indicator of how well that played. I saw a similar dive on the first mention of “Joe six pack”, and I think it may have happened in one or two other occasions with an over used talking point phrase, but don’t quote me on that (Seriously, If I see the preceding sentence wrapped in quote tags in someone else’s post, I will be very put out. I may cry or something)
Seeing as McCain/Palin has pumped so much into creating the Maverick brand, how do you think we can expect them to respond to this going forward? Maybe, more importantly, could this possibly indicate that we Americans have begun to exceed our tolerance level for talking points and sound bytes?
Without really having an opinion about them as such, this does not seem surprising. It does seem a bit bizarre to go around calling calling oneself (or one’s team) maverick. It’s rather like going around saying “we’re the cool bunch.” It’s best left to others to call you that, when you do it yourself, it can only sound at best like reaching.
I was watching CNN and was fascinated by the chart. And yes, every time Palin did her shtick with “When I was Mayor/Governor”, “You betch”, “Hockey Mom” etc the lines went very cool.
Also, the woman watchers were more reactive - bigger swings up and down than the men.
I watched every single of episode of Maverick as a kid.
I know the history of Bret, Bart and even Beau intimately.
And frankly, McCain, you are no Maverick.
A little bit. At least its a definitive name. Kind of a silly, simplistic name, but better than the vague dismissive descriptor “little squiggly lines” Thanks
IIRC, Palin’s husband was supposed to have some Native American or Eskimo ancestry (I can’t remember which), which wouldn’t really be surprising for an Alaska native.
Well they have decided to stop with the mavericking and all the positive branding. Now all negative all the time! I am sure that it will sell sooo much better!
Yeah, the oddness of creating a maverick brand to burn into your side to identify your self as conforming to the standards of the team begins to become apparent to all. Don’t you want to be a Pepper too!