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:
- The teevee
- Newspapers
- The internets
- Billboards
- Lawns
- Direct mail
- Cellular telephones
- Trucks and vans rolling down the street with loudspeakers
- Door hangers
- Buttons
- 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
- Interviews with assorted journalists, often but not exclusively selected for sympathy and/or complacency
- T-shirts
- Car bumpers
- 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….”
FILED UNDER: Oily the Splot robust democratic discourse
