(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)
__
Under a photo of a set that looks like the bastard offspring of Minority Report and Enemy of the State, the NYTimes reports that the “Romney Campaign Works Feverishly to Project A Relaxed Image“:
… Working from makeshift offices at a hockey arena here, a team of Romney advisers, producers and designers have been staging and scripting a program for the Republican National Convention that they say they hope will accomplish something a year of campaigning has failed to do: paint a full and revealing portrait of who Mitt Romney is…
The campaign aides are determined to overcome perceptions that Mr. Romney is stiff, aloof and distant. So they have built one of the most intricate set pieces ever designed for a convention — a $2.5 million Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired theatrical stage. From its dark-wood finish to the brightly glowing high-resolution screens in the rafters that look like skylights, every aspect of the stage has been designed to convey warmth, approachability and openness…
The most ambitious element of stagecraft, however, will be the podium — which features 13 different video screens — the largest about 29 feet by 12 feet, the smallest about 8 feet by 8 feet and movable. All the screens will be framed in dark wood…
Along with other props — including a digital clock mounted to one of the arena’s upper rings that will show the national debt ticking ever-higher — the video screens will help augment whatever messages a speaker is trying to convey, be it images of woeful-looking Americans to convey that President Obama has mismanaged the economy or pictures of the Romney children that speak to the candidate’s deep bonds with his family….
Mr. Romney, who as the planner for the Salt Lake City Olympics has experience coordinating large-scale events, has had a direct hand in shaping some major aspects of the convention, from the podium design to the theme, “A Better Future,” which he personally approved.
Probably just as well that the target audience is either too old or too young to remember Max Headroom: “He’s the toast of the town (lightly buttered). He’s the non-fattening sugar substitute in your tea. He’s a bon vivant, a gaucho amigo, a goomba, a mensch, and the fifth musketeer. He’s the apple of your eye and aren’t you glad he’s here. Direct from a wax and shine at the carwash around the corner, it’s the man of the hour, or at least for a good thirty minutes, Max Headroom.”
Meanwhile, speaking of warmth, snobby urban elitist Will Doig calls the city of Tampa “America’s Hottest Mess” — “a disaster, and a perfect reflection of where Tea Party politics will lead cities”:
… Tampa is a hot urban mess, equal parts Reagan ’80s and Paul Ryan 2010s. Urban renewal projects decimated the city in the ’60s, but its current persona was forged in earnest starting three decades ago, when finance and insurance companies started moving their back-office operations there, attracted by the sunshine and low-cost labor. The 1988 bestseller “Megatrends” declared Tampa “America’s next great city.” Real estate joined the service economy as a major economic pillar, and the city embarked on a building spree, sprouting large glass towers disconnected from the city itself, a development pattern that offered little incentive to invest in things like parks, transit or walkable spaces.
This left little of the quality urbanism people now pay a premium for. And while other cities made similar mistakes, Tampa has been slow to correct theirs, stymied by tight-fisted Tea Party politics. “We look at Dallas or Houston, with all the same challenges we have; they’ve managed to start changing their patterns of development and attract the creative-class younger folks who are looking for alternatives to the suburban lifestyle,” says Steve Schukraft, the Tampa Bay area’s representative to the Congress for the New Urbanism. When you’re wistfully pining for Houston’s urban virtues, things are not going well…
But Tampa can only do so much thanks to a toxic combination of hostility toward government, revenue and collectively used amenities. What’s the matter with Tampa? The Republican conventioneers will get to see for themselves when they arrive. Except that some of them will be staying up to 90 miles away from the convention venue. “Tampa’s reeeally spread out,” the host of the Politico discussion observed to Mayor Buckhorn. That it is. And because of this, the city has chartered over 400 buses to move the convention visitors around while they’re there…
Four hundred rental buses full of excited conventioneers and politicos, in Florida, in August — what could possibly go wrong with those visuals? The city fathers can congratulate themselves on one small victory, however: Nowhere in either article do the phrases “strip club” or “lap dances” appear. Progress!
Amir Khalid
The NYT headline”
Is there even such a thing as a warm Mitt Romney?
Ben Cisco
Isn’t pablum usually served up at room temperature?
Baud
I think Romney should give his acceptance speech sitting in a lounge chair, wearing a smoking jacket, and puffing on a half-bent dublin smoking pipe.
Or he can enter the stage Mr. Rogers-style, singing a friendly-sounding ditty while changing his shoes:
It’s a beautiful day for tax shelters.
A beautiful day for a tax break.
Would you give me
Would you give me
Would you give me…another.
bob h
Tampa will be a carnival of hate and freakishness. There is no way any bounce comes out of it.
raven
They fucking deserve each other.
MikeJ
If Betty Cracker moved out of Florduh I’d say cut it off and let it drift out to sea.
Joseph Nobles
“every aspect of the stage has been designed to convey warmth, approachability and openness…”
And then Mitt Romney climbs onto it. It’s like building a 28-layer wedding cake and then taking a dump on it.
Schlemizel
We lived on the other side of the toilet with palm trees for a number of years and can attest to the damage that a tight-fisted teabaggin’ electorate can do. Public parks were few & poorly maintained with little or no amenities. Public services were a joke, the school system a disaster. Lowest paid teachers in America, Bravard County FL, home of Kennedy Space Center.
But the crown jewel of the crap fest was the public library. They had no money to buy books so they lived, literally, off donated books. I counted twelve copies of Rush Lamebrain’s “‘High Snorting Oxy And You’re Not” (or whatever the heel it was called) and seven copies of Bag’Ocrap O’Reilly’s screed. The section labeled as fiction (as opposed to the section where the above fiction was found) could have passed for an airport book shop. Recent Gresham and Rice and a ton of romance novels. Keeping people stupid there was the easy part.
wrb
Just pop those buns out of that oven
dmsilev
@Amir Khalid:
Sure. 30 seconds in the microwave will do it nicely.
WereBear
@Schlemizel: Holy mother of pearl.
I went to Gemini elementary school there, when the Space Center was in full swing and the moon was reached. It was an amazing school; I was in fifth and reading at the tenth grade level because we had different tracks and lots of dedicated teachers.
It was when I left such a protected environment, (we moved inland and discovered it was an aberration,) that the real Florida revealed itself. It was basically, “Hurry up and die, citizen, we aren’t making money on you.”
Chyron HR
Sure, the GOP convention has a 200 million dollar podium designed by Howard Roark, but at least there’s none of those faggy columns, amirite?
VidaLoca
Considering that their set in 2008 looked like the bastard offsping of Triumph of the Will, this may be progress.
arguingwithsignposts
@VidaLoca: that is a very understated Godwin.
arguingwithsignposts
Also, that stage design in the NYT photos looks hideous.
ant
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiTM2HQ0g98
Schlemizel
@WereBear: Sadly, a lot of the people who worked at the Space Center seemed to care a lot more about their taxes than their children. Or maybe their children were grown by then.
My son was in the Advanced Algebra class in his high school and hated it because the teacher “sucked” at that age it was tough to get specifics. We went to parents night & the class was held in a large room. There were 15-20 desks in front of the room & another 15-20 off to one side. I asked the teacher if there were two classes being held in the room.
“No, I got a bunch a kids who don’t care about Algebra so they sit over there and play cards and joke around while I teach this group.”
He said that as if it was the most normal thing you could expect . . . and this was the ADVANCED class!
Florida has the lowest rate of high school grads who go on to college in the country (or did a decade ago when I read the study) and 50% of the grads, public or private needed remedial English and math to make it in college. Its a third world country attached to America.
Keith
I’m hoping the convention introduces more of America to the term “rub ‘n tug’.
dmsilev
No, I think their problem is that the last year of campaigning has done a very good job painting a full and revealing picture of who Mitt Romney is. I believe the artist calls it “Portrait of an amoral money-leech”.
jeffreyw
Just put the brisket into the oven. Remind me to check it in six hours.
HRA
@Schlemizel:
“But the crown jewel of the crap fest was the public library. They had no money to buy books so they lived, literally, off donated books. I counted twelve copies of Rush Lamebrain’s “’High Snorting Oxy And You’re Not” (or whatever the heel it was called) and seven copies of Bag’Ocrap O’Reilly’s screed. The section labeled as fiction (as opposed to the section where the above fiction was found) could have passed for an airport book shop. Recent Gresham and Rice and a ton of romance novels. Keeping people stupid there was the easy part.”
One part of my work for the last 2 decades is inputting donated books into our campus libraries. Early on no one put a halt to adding multiple copies of books. Then they added leisure reading books. It took the danger of the floors not being able to sustain the weight to have them toss out the books that were molding and not desired by anyone, to eliminate the leisure books and to build an annex to store a good amount of those deemed to precious to throw out. Now we evaluate their worth more closely.
That Romney/Ryan set not only looks like who did it and ran, it has the ability to have the audience distracted from the speakers. Just saying…
jeffreyw
Undefined, the story of my life. One more time: Brisket into oven. Needs about 6 hours. Remind me, pls.
The Thin Black Duke
All Hat, No Cattle: the sequel.
espierce
Tampa 2012: Where the Stupidity meets the Humidity.
(Actual bumper sticker seen in Tampa)
Omnes Omnibus
@jeffreyw: Don’t forget to check on your brisket in about 5.5 hours.
raven
@jeffreyw: Online timer.
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
Mmmm, that’s going to smell good by mid-morning!
On topic, I lived in Tampa from 1969-75. Except for school (the then very new and innovative USF) and the early years of my broadcasting career, I had no use for Tampa, Hillsborough County, or much of anything in Florida. Left in 1975 and, except for one quick business trip, have never been back and never missed it for a minute. Reading these articles reminded me why.
Linda Featheringill
@Schlemizel:
Library in Tampa:
That is mind boggling that a city of Tampa’s size can’t/won’t support a library.
Maybe I’m spoiled by living in NE Ohio. Libraries have decent resources even in poor areas and with inter-library loans you can get hold of almost anything. Of course, library funding issues at election time almost always are approved.
According to Wiki, the main downtown branch has an annual attendance of over 800,000 people. You should see that place during the lunch hour. Very busy.
Edited. Grammar, wherefore art thou?
MaxxLange
Libraries coddle homeless people. They are undesirable places where the staff encourages terrorism by passive resistance against the Patriot Act. All paid for with YOUR tax dollars! Anyway, people have cable now.
jeffreyw
@raven: Cool!, thanks, dude.
Nemesis
romney likes dark wood?
Why, I never thought of him that way…
Richard Shindledecker
And the most wonderful thing is that these people, smiling, happy – hate each other! And they have guns… Schadenfreud rules.
Patricia Kayden
The Bot should bring a dog on the stage and apologize to it for his mistreatment of Seamus. That would make him seem warm and fuzzy.
Linda Featheringill
@raven:
Online timer: Marvelous! I’ll certainly use it. Thanks.
Cassidy
I always thought dark woods conveyed money, maybe some warmth, but it costs money to get that kind of “warmth”.
Boudica
Wasn’t the architect in “The Fountainhead” modeled off of Frank Lloyd Wright? Is it a dog whistle to the Randians to have the set look like it was designed by him?
Also, as a public librarian in Texas, I hear my tea party patrons (who use the library often) tell me that the library is an example of good government. Of course, I’m sure tea partiers who don’t use the library would think it should be gotten rid of.
WereBear
@Boudica: You are giving them far too much intellectual credit. Many of them acquire ideas via osmosis, anyway, much like amoebas filter nutrients through their cell membranes.
I know it sounds terribly cruel and harsh to reduce human beings to mindless single-celled beings, but I have spent my entire adult life in the shadow of the Rising Right Wing, seeing my opportunities, my ambitions, my health care and career and home and business, all my furniture and most of my pets; all sucked down the drain of their overwhelming fear and ignorance and meanness.
I’m done.
Valdivia
I looked at the pictures of the podium, all those huge screens with pictures on them will completely swallow Romney while he speaks. It’s super distracting and looks like something out of a badly designed tv studio.
When does the Convention begin and end? So I can make sure to miss it?
NonyNony
@Linda Featheringill:
Oh we are definitely spoiled here in Ohio when it comes to libraries. We have some of the best libraries in the country by most any metric (that’s not just state pride talking – Ohio libraries are constantly being awarded “Best Library of the Year” by the American Library Association).
And it’s because we fund them at the state and local level. When Strickland’s budget was going to cut the Library and Local Government fund there was such a large backlash that the state house backed down. And Kasich didn’t even try to touch the libraries last time.
Once nice thing about libraries in Ohio – they’re a resource for the ex-urban moms who are looking for things to do with their kids, a resource for the homeschooling parents who are looking for material for teaching, and often the core of a community center area for elderly folks who use the library during the day. Shockingly Republican voters don’t like it when you try to take away their nice things, no matter how many wingnuts we get in Columbus who think that the libraries are stealing business from Amazon and Blockbuster and so we should shut them down.
Emma
South Florida is populated by people who want something for nothing. The public library is the biggest case in point. I used to work at a major branch — one of my jobs was evaluating and adding donations, btw — and it was always jammed from about 3pm until closing seven days a week. These same people voted down any increase in taxes for the library, sometimes as small as ten cents a person. The county keeps cutting property taxes and promising the same library services, so librarians are regularly shuttled between branches so they can be open at least a few days a week. And they still provide a full range of services and programs.
Public services librarians are heroes.
Hal
Oh Huffpo:
Big announcement that Romney will bless the world with his 2011 returns by Oct 15, according to Huffpo.
arguingwithsignposts
@Boudica: Meh. Frank Lloyd Wright was the only American architect any of them could think of.
Kay
@Valdivia:
Oh, you have to watch. I thought Palin’s speech was absolutely awful as an introduction, but pundits swooned. You have to watch so regular people can push back against their creating a story, because they’ll do it again. Palin polled poorly for MONTHS after ’08 before they would admit that she’s broadly unpopular. MONTHS. They were still industriously selling her long after most people had rejected her.
Valdivia
@Kay:
I am such a scaredy cat Kay! I walk into the kitchen and mute the channel if its on CNN or even the evening news. But maybe I will find a group of friends I can watch with so we can point and mock when appropriate.
WereBear
@Valdivia: I was literally sick to my stomach during the Republican Convention of 2008.
They had a 9/11 film which featured the people leaping to their deaths from the Towers.
They had a long keynote intro where Fred Thompson dwelled in loving detail all the tortures McCain had endured; while in the front row sat McCain’s elderly mother.
And, of course, worshipping the corpse of Ronald Reagan.
Valdivia
@WereBear:
I missed all of it! and I followed the Palin speech on mute while reading a live-blog of it because even then I couldn’t hear her voice and not want to drive a fork into my ears.
R-Jud
@Valdivia: I was pregnant and insomniac during that period, so I watched the whole thing. My reaction to Palin was Orwellian: “Picture a Naughty Monkey pump stamping on a human face, forever.”
dance around in your bones
Uh, isn’t there an inherent contradiction in working feverishly to project a relaxed image? Shouldn’t they be, like, kicking back or something?
Anoniminous
@Valdivia:
Think that’s the idea. Given sufficient hi-techy-tech distraction in the background the punditry, journalists, and TV audience will overlook the vacuous inanities being said in the foreground.
Valdivia
@R-Jud:
I am truly sorry you had to have that engraved in your mind. Just reading about it made me want to throw my laptop out of the window!
@Anoniminous:
Ah! Good point. Hadn’t thought of that–feature, not bug.
Schlemizel
@Linda Featheringill:
Linda,
Actual this was due West of Tampa, Think Cocoa Beach. But I doubt the rest of the palace is much better.
Hennepin County (Minneapolis) MN has a stunningly good library with many great resources. The teabaggers would of course love to destroy it and replace it with a cheap imitation but so far they have not been able to.
Schlemizel
@Boudica:
Yes, if it is something they themselves get direct benefit from the teabaggers are all in favor of it. If the benefit is not directly to them in obvious ways they it is wasteful by definition and must be eliminated.
Its one big reason for the home school push
dance around in your bones
I got kinda scared about the 13 video screens until I read that they will be showing dismal Americans instead of 13 Mitts.
OMG that was an awful brain flash.
flukebucket
Hell if we give Rmoney the keys to the kingdom he will not only be warm he will be moist. Time to invest in the Caymen Islands!
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@Emma: Oh, Jeez. I’ve been away for the last 6 years, just returning to Bradenton a year ago. First thing I did was renew the library card. Damnation! The main library is now open only part-time and you need a schedule to know when in fact these hours are each day of the week.
Think I’ll drive up to TPA during the convention and join a free-speech cordon and yell my damned fool head off. Maybe even take in a lap dance or two and imbibe copious amounts of powerful purgatives.
Mr Stagger Lee
@NonyNony: Libraries are my church, the books are my holy script, whether it is biographies to reading Conrad, Hemingway or Sinclair Lewis, libraries are and still my lifetime graduate studies,(I never spent much time in college). Any attempt to close these Temples of Knowledge and I will Che Guevara on the Tea Party.
Mnemosyne
@Boudica:
It was in the movie version, and Rand co-wrote the screenplay, so I’m assuming it was done on purpose. Of course, all of the architecture they show in the course of the film is awful, third-rate Wright ripoff crap, but what else can you expect from Rand?
The movie itself is actually kind of fun, if you love bad movies. It’s really, truly an awful piece of crap. Both Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal have this hollow-eyed look through the whole film, like they’re having to take vomit breaks after each line of dialogue.
The Other Chuck
@WereBear:
Naw, the right wing treasures single-celled organisms more than half the population after all.
Yutsano
@Mnemosyne: Ahh the old contract system: act or die.
bward
Some of this talk is out of hand. Tampa’s downtown is a mess. I live there and while some things are improving, slowly, it’s very difficult to get any flow to it. But the public library system, I find, is very well run. I have been to the downtown library maybe 100 times. I live about a block from a satellite library that has always been responsive, although it is a bit small. The fact is there are a lot of people who like this city and are trying to right the ship down here. I guess we could just move away. But the hell with that. Close-minded backward looking people can’t live forever. Oh yeah, we also delivered a hell of a lot of Obama votes 4 year ago.
Xecky Gilchrist
Four hundred rental buses full of
excitedsemi-bathed, hate-amped and heavily armed conventioneers and politicos, in Florida, in AugustClarified.
Plus, aren’t buses totes communistical?
fuzed
Max Headroom. Took a Ronnie simulation and amped up the intelligence. Man it would be nice to see him back and biting at the current news.
LanceThruster
@Amir Khalid:
All that has to be done to see the “warm Romney” is to, as Ann has recommended, unzip Mitt.
LanceThruster
I hate the snobbery of putting down someone else’s community (even when somewhat deserved), but I remember my boss telling me (a former NFL Pro-Bowl player) when I asked him what he thought of Orlando, which I was about to travel to for the first time –
“Well, at least it isn’t Tampa.”
g
Ah, yes. They’re burnishing their nominee’s image by giving him the world’s largest Executive CEO office as a stage set. Very patriotic.
The Other Chuck
Yes, nothing says “old fashioned homey warmth” like 13 giant video screens.
Dr.BDH
Here’s hoping they run some busses down to GaYbor, Tampa’s hottest neighborhood.
http://www.gaybor.com/
AHH onna Droid
@Schlemizel: Thank you for that. Florida is the third world, but nobody believes me. Disease, corruption, murder, poverty, and a deadly tropical swamp. We want for nothing.
AHH onna Droid
@bward: if you care about Tampa’s future please pressure your pols to sack all of HARTLess’ current management. Why do they need multiple HR directors at a transit agency? Something smells.
21 december 2012
Off course the speech may be effective but I think the speaker is not. :D