“A Visual Pabulum To Hapless Voters”

by Zoë Pollock

Brian Thill dissects the imagery and fonts choices of the campaigns thus far:

We recognize in Perry’s iconography the pharmaceutical sheen of a throat lozenge, as if Perry held out the hope for us of serving as a blue Pfizer pill against the impotence of secular, post-industrial America.

… Where Bachmann needed to remind the world that the office she is seeking is indeed that of the presidency (meaning she could not get away with proclaiming her name alone), that otherwise innocent third line of hers, “For President,” heretofore largely ignored, now becomes critically important. Perry’s version elides the preposition altogether, and offers us instead the stark, alliterative “Perry President,” situating his name in perihelial proximity to the presidency. This is a man with no patience for prepositions, or propositions. It is a rootless, Manichean syntax, one that even the Incredible Hulk could love.