ARNOLD THE PITCHMAN….I passed up an opportunity to blog about Governor Arnold’s pothole photo op the other day (yes, his people actually dug a pothole on a well maintained suburban street just so they could film him filling it in), so I’m going to make up for it by posting about the latest from Mr. “No Special Interests”: product placements in his campaign ads.
Via Digby, BAGnews has a shot-by-shot deconstruction of Arnold’s latest ad, one of a series currently infesting my TV screen in which he tells a group of average citizens that the legislature is out of control and must be stopped etc. etc. etc. BAG thinks Arnold screwed up the ad via poor lighting, weird facial expressions, litter on the table, and so forth, but I think that’s probably deliberate. He was going for a look that says he’s really in a lunchroom with some genuinely average folks, and that’s what he got.
But what I didn’t know is that the junk food littered on the table all comes from companies owned by Nestle and Pepsi:
The TV ad, released in May, features Schwarzenegger talking to people in a lunchroom, and places Pepsi and Arrowhead Water in prominent spots next to the governor for one-third of the ad….Also recognizable on-screen are Ruffles, Sun Chips, Cheetos and a SoBe Beverage, all brands owned by Pepsi.
….Pepsi gave the governor $30,000 in campaign contributions. The CEO of Nestle, the parent company of Arrowhead, gave Schwarzenegger $21,200. Another Nestle family company, Dreyer’s Ice Cream, and company executives gave the governor $228,600.
I guess that’s why he’s governor and I’m not: it never would have occurred to me to fill my campaign commercials with brand named trash from my contributors, but it was second nature to him. The banality of corruption is everpresent, isn’t it?
