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Go Home America's First Multiplatform Gaffe

TIMOTHY NOAH MARCH 21, 2012

America's First Multiplatform Gaffe

BY TIMOTHY NOAH

Erich Fehrnstrom's fatally candid comparison of his boss Mitt Romney's planned general-election campaign to a shaked Etch-A-Sketch may be the political world's first multi-platform gaffe. What makes it new and different is its extreme ripeness for visual exploitation at the virtual dawn of a new era of social networking on proliferating varieties of gadget. In times past, when a candidate or one of his top aides committed a gaffe, his or her betise entered an echo chamber, to be sure, but that chamber was confined to traditional media--television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. These media usually confined their repetition to words, which are their specialty. Visual gaffes occurred now and then, but the general sobriety of traditional news media dictated that they be captured in traditional news photos such as the famously unconvincing shot of Richard Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, trying to demonstrate how she might have accidentally erased 18 and a half minutes from a key Watergate tape. Thus when Jimmy Carter claimed to have been attacked by a rabbit, or when George W. Bush almost choked to death on a pretzel, opportunities for visual mockery were limited by the absence of good news footage to a few political cartoons.

It's different now. Political coverage by Comedy Central and the Onion is arguably more influential than many straight-news outlets on television and in newsprint, and we can expect some pretty hilarious exploitation of the visual possibilities of Fehrnstrom's simile. But the main reason this will be the gaffe heard 'round the world is the Web. Fehrnstrom's Etch-A-Sketch crack will inspire parody images, Web widgets, and apps downloaded onto computer screens, tablet computers, iPhones, and of course Etch-A-Sketches. These images can effortlessly be e-mailed, Facebooked, and tweeted hither and yon. Competitive impulses will be stirred among rival campaigns, amateur and professional Web designers, and legions of wiseacres with too much time on their hands. Already we have this and this and this and this. There will be much, much more, and to Romney it will feel like it's coming in the windows, down the chimney, and up the bathtub drain.

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15 comments

Erich Fehrnstrom is just going to have to tell people he was brainwashed.

- Nusholtz

March 21, 2012 at 5:32pm

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I dunno. Weiner's infamous pic was arguably single-platform, and it was much more than merely a "gaffe," but it carried over so easily to multiple forums (Twitter, pornography, photoshopped photographs, punchlines, double entendre, homonymity, etc.) and it was comical & devastating to his career for so many reasons that I'd say it feels like it almost counts as "multiplatform." What are some others? Karl Rove, John Ashcroft, and David Gregory have all been guilty of singing &/or rapping &/or dancing in the public eye, embarrassing themselves in a way that opens them to verbal, lyrical, sonic, visual, and video-based means of ridicule. But those weren't really gaffes, just awkward moments due to dubious decision-making of the moment, more premeditated that Howard Dean's unjustly derided "Hyahh!." Bah. I give up. Mr. Noah is right. This appears to be unprecedented. Mitt Romney's campaign has made history.

- Konstantin

March 21, 2012 at 6:06pm

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Ok, let me get this straight. France corners an Al Qaeda Killer in his home after his 2nd killing spree, a man returned to France from Afghanistan by the US Army, who was tracked by the French Police for 2 years, and Mr. Noah thinks the Mitt Romney campaign's assessment is news? How far out in left field is TNR?

- CRS9TNR

March 21, 2012 at 6:34pm

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Good grief. I didn't think they even MADE etch-a-sketches anymore! A toy from my childhood? Can the Romney campaign get any more retro?

- timteeter

March 21, 2012 at 6:34pm

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Oh please CRS. Like we didn't know? This is a blog about American politics, not a "this just in" news ticker.

- timteeter

March 21, 2012 at 6:36pm

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how is telling the truth about something anyone with half a brain knows a gaffe?

- blackton

March 21, 2012 at 6:36pm

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I would pay everything I have to see Obama, during the first debate in the general campaign against Romney, wait for Romney to begin some soliloquy that includes a wild flip flop from an earlier position, just slowly take out an etch-a-sketch from beheath the podium and begin fiddling away....

- Tristan

March 21, 2012 at 6:57pm

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Tristan Totally. How about a big billboard on the side of the expressway with a blank Etch-a-Sketch and a caption that states: "Don't let this happen to you!"

- Nusholtz

March 21, 2012 at 8:11pm

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Shame on you Konstantin. You left out the most awkward attempt at musicality of all time, and on a Romney post too: http://youtu.be/FDwwAaVmnf4

- miceelf

March 21, 2012 at 8:18pm

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The New Republic is not very far to the left at all, CRS. For that, you have to go to the unintentionally amusing publication, The Nation. If you think that this publication is pink, you probably are one of those geniuses who believes that Barack Obama is a socialist.

- liberalref

March 21, 2012 at 9:40pm

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Romney 2012: It could be worse! Fehrnstrom is stuck. He's too close to Romney. He's going to own it because he's not leaving the campaign.

- chaitless

March 22, 2012 at 1:59am

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We must applaud the appearance of a truly fresh metaphor into this political season and in this case a paradoxically indelible one.

- paskunac

March 22, 2012 at 6:57am

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Fehrnstrom is simply too experienced a media pro for me to believe his epic gaffe occurred just because he'd let down his guard while savoring the satisfaction of another primary win. Something this big and stupid has to be cultural. In reaching for the Etch-a-Sketch metaphor, Fehrnstrom was only doing instinctively what the Republican Party has been doing deliberately ever since George W. Bush ended his disastrous eight-year reign, which is to wipe the historical slate clean and forget all about it so that everything that's gone wrong before or since can be blamed on Barack Obama. Fehrnstrom's cynical response on CNN is nothing more than of a piece with a Republican presidential campaign and a Republican Party that is steeped in cynicism and betrays a contempt for facts, a contempt for truth, a contempt for principled consistency, a contempt for American traditions and institutions and a P.T. Barnum-like contempt for the average American voter that you'd expect from a party that thinks it's found the secret to creating its own reality.

- TedFrier

March 22, 2012 at 12:26pm

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Romney should embrace his etch-a-sketch label as a re-imagined campaign button and just hand out gold plated etch-a-sketches that say "Romney - shake and draw the answer you want!" Romney is really more like the Magic 8 Ball...yet another missed opportunity.

- singlspeed

March 22, 2012 at 1:52pm

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There's his "Doonesbury" avatar - the Etch-a-Sketch

- dubyadoubte

March 22, 2012 at 2:36pm

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