Head On

Pah, just like an out-of-touch and autocratic blogger to get on to a consumer fad well after it's been played out. I refer, of course, to bloglord Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, who just produced a post about media consultants that references NY Governor candidate Eliot Spitzer's ads and talks about how slick they are.

I've been a fan of Spitzer's ads for a while, in part because they make him seem all presidential, but mostly because they obscure what a strangely-proportioned head he has. The initial round of adverts (link here to ginormous windows media file) managed to avoid portraying his forehead at all. It's true, you do need to pay big bucks to get attention to detail like that.

There are signs, though, that this might be slipping. The latest ad from Spitzer (yep, another huge wmv file) seems to be an attempt to humanise him through the timeworn tradition of having adorable little children and minorities hold up poorly-written signs in his support. They also, however, display the man's gigantic cranium.

It is not my purpose to mock the candidate - a man I consider an exemplary sh*tkicker of which all New Yorkers should be proud. But one of the first things I was told to look out for when I moved to this fair country was the Americans' obsessions with wonderful-looking hair, an observations that six years of watching late-nite infomercials have done little to counter.

The man may have had a reasonably natty haircut, and the adverts are nowhere near as nuts as those of gay ex-governor of New Jersey Jim McGreevey. But Spitzer's media ops need sprucing up, in the humble opinion of this receding blogger that mocks the bald.

To celebrate our migration to a new shonky mp3-hosting website, we present a tune with exactly the same title as the post (but not the one you think, or the ad you might have noticed recently)

Urge Overkill - "Head On"
Get yer "Americruiser/Jesus Urge Superstar" here. Marvel at how those so suave can produce this so murky.