Obscurity and Absurdity

    This is an incredibly busy society and culture and a lot goes on that just isn't noticed much or it just wouldn't go on.  Sometimes, if you have your profitable little niche,  keeping a low profile might be a good idea.  If you're in the entertainment industry that might seem counter-intuitive.  You wouldn't think there could be such a thing as 'too much attention' but there is.  The idea of  'say whatever you want about me, just spell my name right' only goes so far.
    I think the "Duck Dynasty" guys are a good example.  Here they were, laboring on in relative obscurity.  The average person was pretty much indifferent to them.  In terms of the overall market, their record cable numbers were paltry but they did manage to generate hundreds of millions in ad revenues.  Then one of these guys emerged in the mainstream media and said some outrageous shit. They spelled his name right. The content of his remarks didn't matter. The attention did.  People associated his name and the name of the show with the network and started just skipping past the network, in total, in the endless surfing, in general because of that negative connotation.  Absurdity.
    It's thought the show was dropped like a hot potato for some bullshit, PC reason.  Nah, they saw the numbers and realized the objectionable bullshit was a poison pill that had generated too much of the wrong attention.  So much of what we are tempted to see as politics is just the simple operation of capital.  Ahem. Back to capitalism.
    Laura Ingraham is kind of having the same problem.  Until recently, it's safe to assume not many had the slightest idea who she is.  She's kind of a poor man's Ann Coulter.  If you have a rudimentary education her brand of fallacious, circular reasoning is, patently absurd.  The problem she's having is people are beginning to associate and identify those who advertise on her show with her less than attractive message.
    I'm beginning to think this is the dynamic at work in bi-annual elections.  Rather than motivating dissatisfaction the people in power are probably just attracting too much attention.  It's pretty easy to make the case that the average political message, no matter the source, doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.  It's the republican's bad luck their message is being increasingly identified with crying children and bankers lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills.  That could be a little hard to overcome.