"It doesn't offend me personally, but I guess for some people it's a question mark ---- is it clever marketing or is it maybe a half-step too far?" Stocks said. "For me, frankly, it's pretty damn clever."
He said it helps that Spy is a well-known sunglass company and Encinitas is a beach town. Stocks said he's heard no complaints from constituents."
Quoted in NCT article, "Cute or Crass? Billboard Makes Splash in Seaside Town". The title and article could easily be one of the hundreds of paid advertisements passing as a news story. Normally this wouldn't be worth reading, yet alone writing about on the blog.
But it is a campaign season and Stocks supposedly embraces Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mitt Romney and other conservatives who center their alternate universe on "family values". You don't get to have it both ways with these people, masters of rigid and unbending dogma.
This is bound to leave an election year mark on Stocks.
For the record and for most of us, this misleading phrase - allowing the far right ownership over the words "family" and "values" needs to be challenged continuously. Here is a wonderful paragraph on values to consider as an alternative to those who would control our personal lives with their belief system from LOL your values.
"Anyway, a word on that whole voting for someone with values thing...
As it happens, I'm a values voter: I deeply value autonomy and consent. I deeply value bodily autonomy and consent. I deeply value equality and justice for marginalized people. I deeply value marriage equality. I deeply value stem cell research. I deeply value the separation of church and state. I deeply value science being taught in schools. I deeply value universal healthcare. I deeply value a robust social safety net.
I value lots of other things, too, all of which make me a person without values, as far as the conservative base is concerned.
Despite their reflexive and compulsive intoning of the word "values" during every election year, as if it's a magical incantation that can be uttered only by those who understand its complex truth, it doesn't really mean anything, in and of itself. It's an ethically neutral word. Everyone has values. What matters is not that you have values, but what values you have. Joseph Stalin valued killing people. Jeffrey Dahmer valued eating people. George Bush valued torturing people. I value not killing people, not eating them, and not torturing them. See? Everyone has values."Afterthought Footnote: remembering how often Mayor Stocks intones, decorum. LOL, Decorum? You score him.
