The EdVocate West

A Lot of Bashing in a Little Time

July 14, 2010 at 12:59 pm arunramanathan Leave a comment

The average male haircut doesn’t last very long. Sure – there are some guys who can take a long time getting a haircut – John Edwards, Gavin Newsom, Bill Clinton or Newt Gingrich (all of whom have something important in common), it’s a pretty rapid experience if you’re working with a skilled barber with a good set of clippers. So, when you actually see not one, not two, but three anti-Jerry Brown commercials in the course of a 15 minute haircut in early July, it gets you thinking. 

First of all, the commercials are slick. I actually enjoyed watching them three times. The music was good – sixties psychedelic rock – and the montage cuts from one Jerry Brown scene to another were brilliant. There was even a clip of Bill Clinton attacking Jerry Brown when Brown ran for President. By the end of the commercial, even if you like Brown, you’re just one montage shot away from being convinced that he is the anti-christ. Second, there are so many shots of the young Jerry Brown that you sort of forget that he’s pushing eighty years old. The man has had a long career in politics. And for those of us rooting for the aged (see Jaime Moyer), you gotta give Jerry some credit for trying. Third, there’s a lot of peace signs in the commercials. Combine that with the psychedelic rock and the occasional shots of rockets shooting at the moon and there was something very California about it.  I mean, we are in California, right. We like peace signs, psychedelic rock and rockets shooting at the moon. Come November, we’re actually going to be voting on whether to “legalize it” (if only Peter Tosh were still alive). There may still be people living in this state who are persuaded by fear mongering about hippies, but they’ve been shrinkwrapped in Palm Springs  for the last forty years. Besides, a good third of the voting public are baby boomers who actually pine for the day when they had long hair, could dance without pain and the pills they were taking weren’t prescribed. Fourth and last, you can try to blame Jerry Brown for all sorts of things, but saying in a tv commercial that he was responsible for the longtime dysfunction in Oakland Public schools and the district’s bankruptcy is a serious cheap shot. In California, a mayor had as much control over public schools and schools boards as the local fire chief (or the superintendent of public instruction).

At some point, I hope Candidate Whitman will spends some of those gagillions of dollars to present a positive vision and specific fixes to Californians, especially on education (and just saying we need to change and cut the waste isn’t enough). Same thing for Candidate Brown. The stakes are too high. The problems too serious. And the millions of Californians getting haircuts in the coming months, deserve better.

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