September 25, 2004

Presidential Halloween masks.

"Bizarro Gordon" is offering up political commentary as a guest blogger at Venturpreneur, to compensate for regular blogger Gordon Smith's aversion to talking about politics. BG's first post links to the "buycostumes" site, which claims that the sales of masks representing the presidential candidates predicts the outcome of the election. The winner of the election, we're told, corresponds to which mask sold the most. We're urged to buy a mask and thereby cast our vote. Nice sales pitch. But I have three problems. First, the Bush mask looks more like Nixon than Bush. It's just a crappy mask. Second, people go as negative characters for Halloween. They aren't in favor of devils and pirates and witches. Third, sometimes one candidate just looks scarier, weirder, funnier, or more distinctive than the other candidate, and would make the better mask for that reason. A Kerry mask is just more Halloween-y than a Bush mask. The original President mask that really took off was Nixon--and it sure wasn't because he was popular!

Personally, I think the website is just making up the statistics about mask sales to try to lure visitors into spending money to up the percentage for the candidate they support. BG has a different theory though, so go read that.

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