One of the effects of design in media is its ability to underscore or derail a message. And that’s an important fact for a presidential candidate (or their campaign materials designer) to take into consideration. I mean, despite its at-first-glance solidity and structure, you wouldn’t want to end up using a font (Trajan) that for the most part these days, is totally associated with horror movies. Conscious or not, there’s an underlying aesthetic appeal built in the color and font and graphic choices of the candidates. In fact, I personally believe that the savviness of the campaign materials probably says a lot about a candidate’s lack of a tendency to micromanage. Bad design decisions are far more likely the fault of overly-fussy and uninformed clients then they are designers. So, who’s looking savvy for 2008 anyway?

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The whole change vs experience dichotomy in the media is a lie and an oversimplification. And the media’s constant churling that there are no real policy differences between the democratic candidates is a lie and an oversimplification. There could not be more of a difference between a candidate who stood against a popular but mistaken war, and one who made a politically calculated vote to support the war because she knew she was running for president in a few year’s time, and didn’t want to get caught on the losing side. But if the media going to make change versus experience their war drum then I could not agree more with will.I.am at the Huffington Post. No one has the experience to deal with the atrocities and global crises we are facing today. No one. And in lieu of that, we need someone with “desire, strength, courage, ability, and passion.” Not a cynic who voted for a war so that she couldn’t be labeled as a peacenik or a dove. We need hope and we need someone who genuinely believes in it, someone who has written a book on the audacity of it.

> “Martin Luther King didn’t have experience to lead… > Kennedy didn’t have experience to lead… > Susan B. Anthony… > Nelson Mandela… > Rosa Parks… > Gandhi… > Anne Frank…”

America! Translate the word experience for what it means in politics: “I know the game. I can play the game. I will not change the game.” Experience brought us a war. Experience has us locked in a partisan game in which only the American people are the losers. The list of heroes above didn’t need experience. They needed courage and passion and ambition. Barack Obama has these qualities. And we need him. ((And despite what the media keeps repeating about Obama’s “vagueness,” you need only read his policies to alleviate yourself of that myth.))

Galbraith, John Kenneth The Culture of Contentment Houghton Mifflin: Boston, MA

This post is part of Banapana’s running bibliography.

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An awful lot of people are dissecting this term “Macaca” and questioning whether Senator Allen really knew what it meant. I can’t see the point in all of this speculation about what he did or did not know about the word he used at the time. His intentions and his racist attitude were made perfectly clear after he used the term: “So welcome, let’s give a welcome to Macaca here. Welcome to America, and the real world of Virginia.” To look at someone with dark skin and presume them an immigrant is nothing short of racist. Does it even matter what the word means? When it’s clear that the senator was making assumptions based on S.R. Sidarth’s appearance, it hardly matters if he had called him by his actual name. The Senator’s intent and assumptions were racist.