Stickybuffalo.com

Hey parents!

Yes, you. Do any of you have insight on the “Happy Meal: Threat or Menace” story? I’m not sure that any Buffalo Kids are old enough yet to start whining about going to McDonald’s for a Shrek toy, yet, but I figured I would at least ask since I don’t know the first thing about parenting and thus my own thoughts on the Happy Meal kerfuffle must be considered somewhat incompletely informed.

Honestly I’m not sure what to think. I don’t like McDonald’s; they don’t quite rank down there with walmart, e.g., but I have no sympathy for them. And they clearly do make every effort to intentionally recruit children into emotional blackmail directed at their own parents, which is self-evidently despicable.

On the other hand, banning Happy Meals just seems like another perfect example of the kind of busybody do-gooder overreach that gives liberalism a bad name. Moreover, popular opinion aside, it doesn’t even sit that well with me; our society genuinely does seem to be on a slippery slope leading to near-criminalization of fat and sugar. Laughable, perhaps, looking at America, but the “we know best” crowd seem to have learned their lesson from the failure of Prohibition. Rather than moving too fast and losing the whole game, the campaign against tobacco has slowly squeezed it out of mainstream American culture over a period of generations. (more…)

So, this year, Obama’s been selling a lot of buttons, t-shirts, signs, and various other things imprinted with his logo. It’s a pretty nifty idea: run a store on your campaign website and file purchases as campaign donations. Your logo sees broader exposure, you get to report super-high donation totals each month, it’s easier for supporters who live in places without a campaign office or frequent campaign events to get campaign gear, people who would already have made donations get a little token for their trouble. Everybody wins.

But I wonder why it seems to take at least several weeks (and sometimes a few months) for orders to be shipped. I’m not complaining in a “where’s my stuff?!?” way, since Obama was gonna be getting my money even without a store on his website. I’m wondering why distributing campaign advertisements isn’t seen as more of a priority. It took my window sign almost 10 weeks to arrive, and I’ve lately been showered with apologetic emails telling me that my buttons, stickers, and t-shirts (ordered weeks ago) just might be shipping soon (though I’m not to expect them to arrive for a few weeks after they’ve shipped). That’s a lot of weeks that I could have been displaying Obama’s logo everywhere I went.

I suppose the cynical answer is that Obama doesn’t really care about people putting signs in their windows, handing out buttons to their friends, putting stickers on their cars, etc., and is really just after the money. That might be the case, though that would be a little surprising, given the amount of importance Obama’s campaign places on the ground game. The online store is supposed to generate revenue and increase campaign visibility, and I seriously doubt the Obama campaign would sacrifice one almost entirely in order to maximize the other.

Rather, it seems like they’re just being really cheap, which I can appreciate. I’m sure they want to maximize the “profit margin” of the Obama gear, and hiring cheaper, slower manufacturers and using cheaper, slower shipping options would certainly be part of that. But really, I’ll be surprised if my “first edition!!!!1!!1!!!” Obama/Biden stickers and buttons get here before election day, at which point their advertising potential will be moot, and the items themselves will either carry a neutral emotional impact or will be depressing reminders of a very bad day.