Oily the Splot: FWIW

For what it’s worth, I don’t find anything particularly nefarious or illegitimate with the Conservatives’ wanting to advertise at gas-station pumps. There seem to have been substantial problems in execution, which I intend to continue chuckling over. But where I was brought up, nobody ever told me gas stations were supposed to be sacred havens from political discourse.

Places where people and organizations advertise, sometimes about politics:

1. The teevee
2. Newspapers
3. The internets
4. Billboards
5. Lawns
6. Direct mail
7. Cellular telephones
8. Trucks and vans rolling down the street with loudspeakers
9. Door hangers
10. Buttons
11. Church basements, town halls, Legion halls, street corners, bandshells in parks, the back of trains, airport tarmacs, diners, factory floors, corn roasts, bingo halls and high-school auditoriums
12. Interviews with assorted journalists, often but not exclusively selected for sympathy and/or complacency
13. T-shirts
14. Car bumpers
15. Toys for the kids

Now, everyone’s going to have a different threshold. Still, I was surprised yesterday to read some people saying, in effect, "Yeah, sure...but gas stations...."