Mitt Romney

Ann Romney’s dressage jockey say dressage is affordable on a ‘normal budget’

AS soon as a horse appears in the title sequence to a TV show your writer turns the channel over or the telly off. The show will either be a costume drama or feature people who want to live in one. So, then, to the Olympics, where Jan Ebeling is riding Rafalca, a dressage horse owned by Mitt Romney’s wife Ann Romney.

Ebeling wants to assure us that dressage is not as expensive as you might suppose. If you budget right, you might have some cash left over for a holiday home in Sardinia. So. Can dressage be a go-to sport for inner city schools? Says Ebeling:

If you look at our team, there’s nobody who’s a millionaire. When I grew up we had no money. I worked my butt off. I cleaned stalls. People saw the talent and would let me ride their horses. Money is not something that defines dressage. It’s something you can do with a normal budget.

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Anorak

Posted: 29th, July 2012 | In: Sports | Comment (1)

Mitt Romney has a national anthem disaster

WHEN Mitt Romney belted out America the Beautiful for the inmates at a retirement village in Florida in January 2012, Camp Obama got the footage and made it into a campaign advert.

When the elected elite sing, disaster often looms:

PS – Romney says the facts stated in the ad are wrong. The singing, however, is all his own work. And isn’t the something likeable about Romney being a rotten singer?

Anorak

Posted: 15th, July 2012 | In: Politicians | Comments (4)

The Dictator endorses Mitt Romney

THE Dictator endorses Mitt Romney.

British jokers telling Americans who to vote for… What could go wrong?

Anorak

Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Politicians | Comment

Old-school toy makes a comeback thanks to political aide’s gaffe

ETCH A SKETCH, the mechanical drawing toy, is making a comeback thanks to a political gaffe by an aide to presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who compared the toy to his election strategy. A new ad campaign by the 104-year-old makers of Etch A Sketch pokes fun at politics with the hopes of boosting sales for the analog classic.

Asked how Romney’s politics next autumn will compare to now, strategist Eric Fehrnstrom likened the campaign to an Etch A Sketch, which lets you create drawings on a grey slate by turning two knobs and then erase them by a simple shake. “You can kind of shake it up and we start all over again”, Fehrnstrom said of the campaign. Queue Romney’s rivals Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich using Etch A Sketches as props and accusing Romney of being a flip-flopper.

The Ohio Art Company, makers of the Etch A Sketch, are hoping to capitalise on the brouhaha and to stage a comeback for a toy that may have qualified as a gizmo back in the 1960s but looks distinctly arcane in the era of Wiis and Xboxes. The company’s new “Shake it Up, America” ad will be doing the rounds on social networking sites soon.

One of the ad slogans says “Etch A Sketch is a lot like politics, there’s a lot of grey area”. Another reads: “We have a left knob and a right knob for each political party. (But remember, when both work together, we can do loop de loops.)”

To emphasise its political neutrality Ohio Art Co plans to make a blue version of the traditionally red toy. There will also be a red-and-blue collector’s edition with etchings of an elephant and a donkey, the symbols for the Republican and Democrat parties.

But despite the wall-to-wall media coverage that the gaffe received and despite the old-school toy’s appearance on the campaign trail, will the public know just what the “Shake it Up” ads are on about? After all, just days before the announcement of the ad campaign, a Pew Research Center poll showed that 55 per cent of people were unaware of the Etch A Sketch incident and out of those who did know about it 44 per cent said it would have no effect on their opinion of Romney. As the Washington Post pointed out, “simply because 100 per cent of people who do politics for a living… are closely following a story, it’s no guarantee that the story is penetrating nearly as broadly among the general public”.

But if the old-fashioned toy does manage to achieve that modern marker of advertising success – going viral – then the Etch A Sketch gibe may be hard for Romney to shake after all.

Nathalie Rothschild

Posted: 31st, March 2012 | In: Reviews | Comment

Rich Kids for Romney – Youth activism in action

RICH Kids for Romney:

Anorak

Posted: 19th, March 2012 | In: Politicians | Comment

Trump and Romney dupe media with unimportant story, says media

MITT Romney is now supported by Donald Trump, he of the tsunami fringe. The Guardian reports this nugget in an unusual fashion:

Mitt Romney wins backing of Donald Trump ahead of Nevada caucuses

Business magnate and champion self-publicist Donald Trump has endorsed Republican presidential Mitt Romney in an event of no importance but one that successfully diverted media attention from the other candidates only two days before the Nevada caucuses.

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Anorak

Posted: 3rd, February 2012 | In: Politicians | Comment