September 7, 2006

The coolest thing about the Mexican election brouhaha

The AP reports:


"The court also dismissed Lopez Obrador's claim of subliminal messages in television ads by pro-Calderon businesses."


Huh? What the heck was that about?

When I was young, every kid knew that movie theatres spliced in frames saying "Buy Popcorn" or pictures of the Sahara to make you thirsty so you would buy Cokes or something (it was never quite clear what they were subliminally advertising). It was all explained in Vance Packard's 1957 bestseller The Hidden Persuaders, but none of us kids had read it. I hadn't heard examples of subliminal advertising paranoia in years until now. Perhaps it's a general rule that dumb American ideas of half a century ago turn into dumb Mexican ideas of the 21st Century.

In uncool news from Mexico:


An armed gang of suspected drug traffickers wearing ski masks threw five human heads onto the dance floor of a bar in western Mexico Wednesday in an apparent revenge killing, prosecutors said.

Wielding hand guns and rifles, some 20 men dressed in black drove up to the Luz y Sombra (Light and Shade) bar in the city of Uruapan, barged into the club and fired shots in the air.

They forced late-night revelers to lie on the floor and pulled the five male heads out of plastic bags, dumping them on the dance floor along with a handwritten message, a spokesman for the Michoacan state prosecutors' office said.


I have to give Mexico some credit for originality here. I don't believe this happened much in America in the 1950s.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

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