Oh look! Pat Powers has a new logo for his SDGOP press release blog:
The symbols emitting from the (partial, dismembered, objectified) woman’s mouth are *!☆@. In most contexts, that unintelligible string would be interpreted as verbal excrement not suitable for civil discourse. Finally, some truth in advertising!
But that’s only one tidbit of truth amidst Dakota War College‘s persistent falsehood. Powers pairs this gross logo with the slogan “South Dakota’s most popular and most influential political website.” Funny: at both of this year’s Aberdeen crackerbarrels, I’ve heard my Republican legislators reference material on Dakota Free Press but never anything from their own party’s mouthpiece. You’d think that the state’s “most popular and influential” blog would come up more frequently in the public statements of the legislators friendliest to its Republican messaging.
I don’t need to assert any claim to popularity or influence. I’ll stick with simply telling you what this blog is: “South Dakota’s true liberal media,” a description in which every adjective—South Dakota’s, true, and liberal—has meaning.
DWC is not a free speech zone. I’ve been blocked there for a couple years for merely asking questions or raising issues Pat doesn’t want to answer or allow others to hear. I’ve never been rude.
When he publishes his stats as you have he will be believable as the most popular and influential political blog in the state. I view it as an echo chamber.
As are twitter accounts of Thune and Rounds as I recall. Criticism equates to lock out.
That characterization looks like Trump yelling.
Reminds me of Wicked!
I’ve been interested in the black, red and white palette for a long time. It’s been a recurring palette, used in graphic images in ballot measures ads in South Dakota since the South Dakota Mining Association used it in the “no” campaign against mining initiatives. I recall seeing it several times more as I’ve read the Dakota Free Press coverage of initiatives over the years. It was the palette, of course, used in Nazi art, particular the rendering of the swastika (black) within a white circle on a red field.
It seems to be favored palette of right leaning groups since. This is interesting to me. I’m taking a course on Art in the Fascist State. Right now we are studying pre-fascist art of some of the art movements in Italy prior to Il Duce’s rise to power. It was the era of constantly issued and changing manifestos in art, which seemed to parallel political manifestos. But the various art movements, even those that were proto-fascist, seemed to champion multiple styles. It was only later and in Germany, not Italy, where art came under a lot of bureaucratization. There was some bureaucratization in Italy, too, but Il Duce’s mistress was a Jewish artist, and she and the long history of art in Italy meant art did not coverage on a favored style until very, very late.
I’m not sure what that has to do with Pat Power’s graphic design, but is interesting to contemplate how fascist art still influences, perhaps unknowingly, today.
grudznick thought it was a musical composition, a new catchy tune, but not being schooled in the clefs and such I could not hum it correctly.
c’mon, grudz … It’s a wall and those are Mexicans trying to get back home to Zacatecas.
Barbed wire stopping free speech at its inception is an apt logo for that blog.
Hickey’s right. Pat Powers imposes tight censorship on ideas he doesn’t agree with and also on people who won’t smooch his patootie – even when the comments they post are respectful.
Fascism, barbed wire… yes, I can see it. On the one hand, Powers portrays free speech as vulgarity, suggesting freedom only leads to bad behavior. On the other hand, those symbols resemble barbs on the taut wires emanating from the alluring red mouth.
Next up: an image of a boot smashing the speaker’s mouth—a different speaker, surely, a mouth with scruffy liberal whiskers around it….
Right below the lines on this photo it reads, “The First Amendment, Gives You Voice”.
I have been censured from commenting on Dakota War College for years, and am probably not the only ones.
When will Pat Powers give me voice?
Conservatives are nothing but Anti-Liberal Bully Trolls. That’s the full extent of their depth and complexity. All of them, to some degree or another.
The dehumanization exercise is long overdue. How far do we let them go before we finally embrace hyperbole?