The Holiday Spirit Obama Style.

I got this today from Obama.

This is just tacky.

The subject line on the email this came in read, “Your Obama holiday mug”.  I don’t always open Obama e-mails, but this one intrigued me.  I wanted to see how they juxtaposed Obama and “the Holidays”.  Obama by the fire?  Obama in a Santa hat?   Then I opened the email and saw how they did it.  They didn’t.

There is nothing Holidays about this mug at all.  It looks like a mug you get as a giveaway at a corporate conference, one with the name of some company trying to sell you something on it.  I thought right away that the Obama campaign must have had these already, before they decided to sell them as Holiday mugs.  The image of the mug itself doesn’t mention the Holidays at all.  It is only in the actual text of the email that the mug is described that way.

But then I started to think how this could very well be the Obama vision of a holiday mug, one stripped of anything that could possibly be controversial, packaged to not offend anyone.  It’s what corporations do now.  Realizing that all their customers aren’t Christian, business has made the smart move and left out any symbols that could potentially disturb a group.  Usually, though, there’s something left, a little red and green, maybe a candle, a tree.  However, this has none of that.  It is absolutely austere.  If this is indeed Obama’s holiday mug, I think it’s just sad.  It feels very cold.

The two donation buttons don’t help the situation either.  The Holidays have usually been times when we give gifts to others, or help people less fortunate than ourselves.  When people ask you to donate for the Holidays, it’s always for some charitable organization.  Somehow I don’t believe the Obama campaign is in need of our charity this season. 

That leaves us with only one possiblity that they are actually trying to sell this as a Holiday gift.  They stress that it will arrive before the 25th, which happens to be Christmas, so this must be a Christmas gift.  I can’t imagine giving this to anyone for Christmas unless it were a gag. I can think of a few people, however, that would find it really funny if I did.  We could toast the new year with hot kool-aide cider served in our historical, once in a lifetime, Obama holiday mugs.