Some liberals miss the sarcasm of DeadElephant.ORG
"...the last thing a TRUE liberal would put on their car is a rethuglican, 'let's just lynch liberals' bumper sticker...You call that a Dem website? I don't buy it... You must think people are as dumb as rocks."Our response:
First of all, let me say that you are NOT the first person ever to have missed the sarcasm of the DeadElephant.ORG campaign. I get an outraged email or post like yours about once per month. That's more than a trickle, if you think about all those who never bothered to write.
On the other hand, I've been gratified - and surprised - at how infrequently the slogans, and the campaign as a whole, are mis-understood. I say "surprised" because the campaign intentionally walks a very fine line. That's what is meant when it is described as "edgy". Interestingly I've never yet heard from a CONSERVATIVE who missed the point. Conservatives immediately recognize that they're being lampooned, and the comments from them are invariably extremely hostile - which I take to mean we're doing something right. You can read real quotes from outraged conservatives on our home page.
So, why push that edge? Because it works. The campaign was created by a small horde of volunteers: creative writers, and professionals in social media and viral marketing. Our purpose is to expose the actual "Rethuglican" ideology to independent voters who aren't paying close attention to the full implications of what conservative pundits and politicians are seriously advocating. Our budget is essentially zero. That means we depend entirely on viral distribution to get that message out. Specifically, it is the ambiguity of the slogans - the "is that guy REALLY advocating THAT" factor - that makes them so arresting, and so much more likely to be forwarded on to others.
I've had DeadElephant stickers on my car, and frequently worn the shirts in public, since the campaign began two years ago (a couple months prior to the last mid-term elections.) I've also, in my life, displayed many other political bumper-stickers and shirts. I live in ultra-liberal Berkeley, California, and I can tell you that I have never received so many compliments as the DeadElephant slogans draw. People walk up to my car in parking lots to laugh and compliment the slogans. And the shirts draw a positive remark nearly every single day that I have one on!
Now, you specifically called out the slogan "Let's just lynch liberals". Of the roughly 100 slogans in the campaign, that one is both the scariest, and most important, in my opinion. I personally monitor ultra-conservative talk radio daily, and I can tell you that the number of conservative callers and hosts who call liberals "traitors" who are out to "destroy America" and who should be "kicked out of the country" is growing rapidly. This hateful, hyper-entitled, and profoundly anti-democratic attitude represents the major threat to freedom in our century. If you take their attitude to the logical extreme, what they conservatives advocate today is LYNCHING anybody who disagrees with them.
posted by DeadElephant.ORG @ 12:55 PM
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