I read the much-linked Marc Ambinder post "Top Ten Reasons Why The GOP Website Relaunch Is Fizzlin'." (The word "fizzlin'" distracted me immensely. I wasted time checking Urban Dictionary — "fizzle" means fool, you know — and only eventually decided that Ambinder either meant the ordinary English word "fizzling" — and he didn't even mean it sarcastically, despite the dropped "g" — or somehow he mean "sizzlin'" sarcastically.)
So I took a look at the website myself. Basically, it's too red and too social-media-y for me to look at it long enough to form an opinion, but I did like this history page, though I had a hell of a time going back and finding it just now. (It's "Accomplishments" on the "Learn" menu.) I'm no expert on website design, but I hate fooling — fizzling? — with pull-down menus. I liked the stable, elegant black-and-white photographs on the history/accomplishments page, and I wish more of the site had that sort of calm stability — which is what I want from my political leaders.
As for the effort to rebrand the party to be all about young people, women, and minorities... It's kind of touching. Or lame. Funny? Awesome?
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Those drop-down menus don't work very well on my firefox running under RedHat. I can't see them because the link to the video obscures them.
I'm guessing they used something running under Windoze to build it.
Oops.
Worst. Website. Ever.
The site loads slowly so all you see for the first 3 seconds is a red background with gold stars (communism anyone?). And then the GOP Faces feature is effin awful. Really, really bad.
Yeah, I never got the whole red for conservatism, blue for liberalism -- this country has the colors reversed.
It's not terrible. Don't like the dropdown menus, and it looks like they started with Obama's site and reworked it for the other side.
Unoriginal.
But whatever -- it won't be a snazzy site that wins for the GOP in 2010 and 2012, if they manage a comeback. Likewise, it won't be a bad one that loses it for them.
It's a political party's website.
I'm greatly amused that it's gotten so much attention as it is. If it were perfect, I bet no one would have even checked it out. Of course, I do not think the GOP is clever enough to pull a trick like that.
I do not really want hyper competent governors. I want limitations on their power. Of course they aren't as well financed as democrats. Democrats have all the people with the money, protecting the status quo from small business, innovation, and distorting regulations via their lobbyists. Slick republicans are basically the same as democrats. It's the jackasses with principles I want. The Abe Lincolns who would be laughed off the stage by MSNBC for their facial appearance.
Screw some dumbass website, though. What Up? Absolutely nothing, apparently.
Ben the democrats insisted that the colors be reversed... for a very long time Blue indeed was conservative (why we call 'em blue dogs?).
But liberal red is too close to communist red, and the press knows who its master is.
Dang - til now, I don't think I've ever seen a website so garish I had to squint while looking at it.
The red/blue switch annoys me, too. The left is red - The East is Red! the Red Scare, etc.
I think USA Today started it back in 2000 with their county-by-county election map.
The RNC: Everything that's wrong with politics and worse.
Both parties are united in their revulsion for and gleeful screwing of middle America. There either will be a second American revolution or our future is Brazil.
The north is Blue. Blue is cold! The south is Red. Red is warm!
It’s safe to say the same sort of people who came up with that RNC website are the same sort of people who came up with “Sizzler.”
Combo-licious!!!
As for the effort to rebrand the party to be all about young people, women, and minorities... It's kind of touching. Or lame. Funny? Awesome?
Dishonest?
They could probably attract some by emphasizing that to be a Republican in college is to be a rebel against authority, and to develop your own thinking against the fascist dictates of the elderly.
Question authority, and all that.
Keep diversity of opinion alive, and all that.
I refreshed the page several times to get new Faces in the Facebook feature. They're all the all the faces you expect to see (actually typoed "sexpect" at first). Young men with game face on, blonde women of all ages, middle aged men with big, thick faces, pictures of babies. And 90% Caucasian. Why is the GOP so white?
Why is the GOP using the flag of communist China as their site's background?
I assume the thinking is: blue cool, Red Square.
I always thought that fizzle meant to go out... like a fire or candle or firework when the fuse "fizzles".
No?
"Yeah, I never got the whole red for conservatism, blue for liberalism -- this country has the colors reversed."
They used to trade off colors, I think.
My first memory of Michael Moore was him doing a man on the street thing asking people what color they thought either political party should be this time and trying to figure out how anyone decided on that.
It was pretty clever and funny, actually.
On second thought... maybe they didn't trade off and he was just asking how the decision was made...
It was a very long time ago (back when Moore and Letterman were *both* still funny.)
And yes... the web-site is way too red and the banner on the top is way too wide. I have to scroll down to see much of anything and then nothing stands out as links and nothing is there that doesn't require clicking through. I have to decide if I want to bother or not and the answer is "not."
When you paint, something red advances and something blue recedes.
Advancing conservative thinking seems a good plan about now.
Kirby, I think you are onto something there. I might go for the "strong individualist" message, however, because that might sound attractive not only to those who don't like authority, but opens it up to include those against "group think".
Besides, American's have centuries of images reinforcing our "rugged individualism" as what made this nation great.
The red is too red, too "in your face". It overpowers the images of the people they are trying to highlight.
I actually felt a sense of relief when I scrolled to the contrasting blue background--not their intention, I'm sure.
Thanks for the note, Penny.
I wonder if the RNC would be willing to do to the left what the left did to them on campuses. If so, they have to get with the young adult mentality of struggling against any given system.
I think talk radio does appeal to that individualist mentality, and standing against corporate authority.
But it would require some knowledge of the terrain, which is one place that RNC is lacking.
That is, they have so few spies on campuses that they probably couldn't get an accurate picture of how to proceed. You have to be on campuses to see how easy it would be to overturn all the sloppy sentimental thinking wrt other cultures, other genders, etc.
It would just require a person with a brain, and a sense of humor.
The whole thing would be dynamite right in the heart of the Democratic parties greatest new majority, the simpletons who swallow what their mindless profs reiterate about Marx.
It would take a counterpunch of Lockean liberalism to expose the soft underbelly of the communist thought that now coagulates in the gulag archipelago that the American university system has become with its speech codes, its crazy and arbitrary repression of white men, and straight people.
It would be so much fun if anybody in the RNC had even a clue.
But they don't.
One group of people who really do understand this is that comedy show that appears at midnight on Fox with those gangly young people laughing it up about the PC left. They could be the hub of a hip new squadron of anti-communist protest that could easily find fun in being truly subversive on campuses, and firing up young people to take back their culture, and their rights.
I am not so sure I see campuses in Marxist terms, Kirby. Kids have always leaned left...with the aid of their parents' money. Isn't this all part of growing up?
If I'm upset with anyone, it is teachers who don't understand their job is to help kids to think and to reason.
Maybe they lean left out of protest. But now it's almost demanded that you be to the left on campuses, so leaning the other way would be countercultural?
That's how I'd play it if I were the RNC trying to spark a rebellion.
I tried to sign up with the RNC. It did not let me. As a result of the rejection, I will join the DNC. Good grief, I am a novice and could do better.Ya'll should be ashamed about your lack of knowledge about how technology works.
From what I can tell, I'm pretty sure Fizzle refers "[failing] ignominiously after a good start" rather than the Urban Dictionary's 'fool.'
@John Clemons Yes, that's what I meant in the post by "the ordinary English word."
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