Latest / Commentary - TJ Meadows / Vent: No Mailers!

Transcript

Vent: No Mailers! · Commentary - TJ Meadows

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: If you stop and think about it, Some invasions come glossy,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: full color, folded neatly. They arrive in the mailbox. I'm
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: talking about political mailers. Now, imagine a stranger strolling into
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: your home uninvited, first to the refrigerator, helping himself to
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: your groceries, then to the living room, sinking into your
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: favorite chair, commandeering the remote and selecting a program so
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: dreadful you choose a root canal instead. Absurd absolutely, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: yet every election season we tolerate something awfully close. The
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: campaign flyer appears again, another oversized postcard, another dramatic headline,
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  Speaker 1: another smiling photo, beside promises written by consultants who have
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: never set foot on your street. You can't opt out,
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the law says, if the postage is paid, the address
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is right, and the piece is lawful. It rides with
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: the birthday cards and the electric bills. Free speech, They say,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: very well, but what about the freedom to be left alone?
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: What of the freedom not to have your mailbox converted
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  Speaker 1: into a delivery shoot for propaganda destined for the trash
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: can One estimate says some two billion dollars two billion
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: dollars was spent on campaign direct mail in the last
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: national election. That's two billion dollars to clutter counters and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: jam mailboxes. The old saying, often tied to Oliver Wendell Holmes,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: tells us, you're right to swing your fist ends at
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  Speaker 1: my nose. Perhaps in twenty twenty six it ought to
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: include my mailbox. Here's a novel campaign strategy. Don't send
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: me six mailers in six days. Don't tell me twelve
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: times your opponent is the end of civilization. Don't treat
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: my mailbox like a satellite campaign office. Show up, speak plainly,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: shake hands, earn attention honestly. Until then the good news.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: My children have discovered a new family game. Three points
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: for every flyer bank directly into the trash bin before
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: it even reaches the kitchen. So on this spring Friday,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: here's hoping the next round of mailers somehow falls off
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the truck and never reaches our mailboxes, or that candidates
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: wise up and stop sending them all together.