{"id":4342,"date":"2005-06-01T12:27:26","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T16:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4342.html"},"modified":"2005-06-01T12:27:26","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T16:27:26","slug":"the-moral-of-the-story-the-media-likes-over-sized-props","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-moral-of-the-story-the-media-likes-over-sized-props\/","title":{"rendered":"The moral of the story: the media likes over-sized props"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, TrueMajority.com created<\/a> a twelve-foot papier-mache statue of Uncle Sam spanking Tom DeLay. The group dubbed it the Spank DeLay Mobile, and drove it around Washington<\/a>, where it was a popular attraction. Better yet, when spankmobile arrived in DeLay’s district outside Houston several days later, three local television stations showed up to cover it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There’s a moral to this story: if you build an over-sized prop to torment your political foes, the media will cover your stunt. Example #2<\/a>, by way of Josh Marshall<\/a>:<\/p>\n

gorilla<\/p>\n

A 28-foot gorilla has begun stalking some of Louisiana’s Republican congressman, starting Tuesday by menacing U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany Jr.’s office in Lafayette’s federal courthouse. <\/p>\n

While it wasn’t granting interviews, the bright red inflated gorilla did carry a sign stating its demand: “Don’t monkey around with my Social Security. Say no to $131,458 benefit cut.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Boustany later complained that the demonstration was a “cheap political stunt.” Of course<\/i> it’s a cheap political stunt; that’s the point. Cheap political stunts are amusing and get attention, which is why the gorilla will be moving to the district offices of Reps. Jim McCrery (R-La.) and Rodney Alexander (R-La.) in the next couple of days.<\/p>\n

Note to press flacks everywhere: If you build it, they (reporters) will come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, TrueMajority.com created a twelve-foot papier-mache statue of Uncle Sam spanking Tom DeLay. The group dubbed it the Spank DeLay Mobile, and drove it around Washington, where it was a popular attraction. Better yet, when spankmobile arrived in DeLay’s district outside Houston several days later, three local television stations showed up to cover […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}