Jun 25, 2004

It's Happy Hour in America

by Liberty and Power

I really don't know about this new ad from CREEP. The dollop of Reaganite optimism, coming after interspersed images of a raving Al Gore, Hitler, Dick Gephardt and Michael Moore is jarring. And I object to the slogan,"this is not the time for pessimism and rage." Why not? When's a good time?

What's with this fascination with optimism anyway? It's dangerous."As the British psychologist Richard P. Bentall has observed, 'There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental events (often to the point of perceiving completely random events as subject to their will), give unrealistically positive evaluations of their own achievements, believe that others share their unrealistic opinions about themselves and show a general lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others.''' Does that sound familiar?

I'd respect a politician who said,"My fellow Americans, now is the time for pessimism and rage. For bitter remarks and caustic sarcasm. Now more than ever. Cynicism in defense of liberty is no vice. Optimism in the pursuit of idiocy no virtue."

But for my money, the greatest campaign slogan ever remains the one from the Norman Mailer/Jimmy Breslin 1968 New York mayoral campaign:"No More Bullshit!" I want a bumper sticker.

More Comments:

Amanda I. Seligman - 6/25/2004

I think that the current emphasis on optimism is related to the emerging "positive psychology" movement. The work of Martin Seligman, at the University of Pennsylvania, among others, demonstrates the relative success of optimists in various competitive activities. Optimism is measured along a variety of scales, which I will not try to reproduce here. One result discovered was that the presidential candidate with the more optimistic "attributional style" has almost always won US presidential elections.

Full disclosure: Martin Seligman is my father. He pesters me from time to time about why historians don't work on positive topics too.

Aeon J. Skoble - 6/25/2004

It's a perfectly cromulent acronym. Besides, IIRC, it has an impeccable GOP pedigree!

Charles R Martin - 6/25/2004

I'd respect someone's opinion about the Bush re-election campaign a lot more if he didn't use "CREEP" to refer to it.