We reported back in February that the Obama campaign was looking for a new slogan. Early reject: “The gas is too damn high.” Apparently they looked across the Atlantic, to one of the Premiere League’s heavyweights, to nick their new motto. “Winning the Future,” the motto stolen from the cover of an old Newt Gingrich book ($6.75 on Amazon), never quite caught on. Today, Obama Inc is out with a new video that tries out its new one-word slogan: “Forward.”
The Obama campaign is very good at making videos. Governing is another story. The video re-casts Obama as the intrepid president who inherited a mess and did his best, glossing right over the fact that in doing his best, Obama has made everything worse. The video blames Republicans for all partisanship, takes credit for the abortifacient mandate, and generally loses the plot of Obama’s years in office. The Obama stimulus didn’t stimulate, the promises of transparency and healing have morphed into opaque stubbornness and sharpened division, unemployment is high, gas prices are higher, and home values are down while tax bills keep going up. So he campaigns, all the time, giving us the razzle dazzle to distract us from all his failures. He scolded America not to “spike the football” when SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, only to snatch the football and spike it himself now that the campaign is on. The only surprise of the video is that Team Obama didn’t insert the Osama death photo into the mix somewhere. Maybe in October.
Like “Winning the Future,” “Forward” as a motto is already in prominent use. Premiere League soccer giants Arsenal unveiled “Forward” as their slogan in 2011, to commemorate the club’s 125th anniversary. “Forward” hit the streets to collective yawns and the Telegraph even described it as “another blow to Western civilization“:
As an Arsenal fan, it pains me to say it, but they too have joined the anti-history club. This season, to celebrate the club’s 125th anniversary, they have commissioned a new crest; as I noticed playing football with my 10-year-old nephew, Tommy, yesterday. Looking at his replica shirt, I saw that, horror of horrors, rather than using Arsenal’s wonderful old motto (“Victoria Concordia Crescit”) they have gone for the dull, Blairite platitude, “Forward”.
As the picture above shows, they try to justify the new motto by saying “Forward” is “one of the first recorded mottos related to armament and battle”. It’s also one of the dreariest and emptiest.
Compare it to the wonderfully rich chunk of Latin that preceded it. Because of the marvellous flexibility of Latin, it can mean, “Victory grows through Togetherness”, and it can also mean “Togetherness grows through Victory”; although it can’t quite mean, “Posh Spice goes by Concorde”.
Like most chunks of Latin, it also shows how deeply indebted the English language is to the Romans. All three words have their direct descendants in today’s English: victory, concord, crescendo.
It also throws light on the days when people consciously looked back to history for inspiration. The Latin motto was born in the last programme of the 1947/48 Championship-winning season, when the editor, Harry Homer (alias ‘Marksman’), wrote: “My mind seeks an apt quotation with which to close this season which has been such a glorious one for Tom Whittaker, Joe Mercer and all connected with The Gunners. Shall we turn for once to Latin? ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’.
Them were the days – the motto was adopted in 1949.
Only to be scrapped in 2011. As a die hard, Gooner-for-life Arsenal fan myself, “Victoria Concordia Crescit” was something to hang onto. It conjured up images of the Invincibles and Thierry Henry sending rockets into the net off his boot, and connected those days to footballer of the year 2012, Arsenal hit-man Robin van Persie. The vague, meaningless “Forward” has been something to forget. For a president who rode in on “Hope and Change” but who presides over Fast and Furious, looking forward may be all that he can have us do anymore. Looking backward is just too painful.
“Forward” makes perfect sense. Obama needs to reframe the narrative, avoid running on his deplorable record, and energize his base with a nebulous promises-for-the-future campaign.
That’s also the cry of the Lemming: Damn the cliffs, full speed Forward!
(Note: Yes, I know Lemmings don’t really run off cliffs en mass. However, many cling to that mythic belief just as many cling to the mythic belief that Obama is a good president leading the country to better times.)
Blindfold and forward!
MSNBC, the Official Lapdog Network of the Obama Re-Election Campaign, has “Lean Forward” as its slogan.
And, indeed, if we go “forward” with Obama, we can look forward to very lean times.
Pay no attention to that record behind the curtain!
I CAN’T vote Obama because he’s ineligible to be President
I WON’T vote Obama because he’s screwed up the country on his watch
I SHOULDN’T vote Obama because he’s a racist partisan hack that actively seeks race and class warfare (with weapons)
I COULDN’T vote Obama because his thuggish sycophants intimidate me and blocked me at the polls
Oh, nevermind….FORWARD has changed my mind. OBAMA 2012!!
Wow. That video is a good one. It almost convinced ME! Republicans better come up with something better — something that takes that video — point by point — and shows how it’s a farce.
Because of your comment I set out to watch it. But I had to stop at about three seconds. It opens with what Obama inherited.
I guess that works with the Dems, but I’m sick of hearing about it. Instead of taking the bait and refuting it point by point, Republicans could always ignore it and focus on what’s happening in America NOW.
Run pictures of gas prices. Run pictures of babies and grannies being frisked in TSA lines and ask OBL be damned, who’s winning in this administration, us or the terrorists? Show college graduates moving back in with their parents and applying for jobs at burger joints. Show coal miners and construction workers staring at unemployment checks instead of paychecks. Then show Barack and Michelle on their fabulous vacations with the amounts it cost taxpayers flashing on the screen and ask who’s out of touch?
Send this to Romney’s campaign manager. Excellent points.
I’m not surprised in the least. If anyone else recollects, Obama’s use of the “Yes, we can!” slogan was a blatant ripoff of “Bob the Builder.”
I guess when you’re smarter than everyone else, it’s acceptable to steal their stuff too.
Cannot resist:
http://www.motifake.com/1521
(Use of “F-word”, but SFW…)
The perfect response to this video is a very short 10 second clip that starts out exactly the same. Then cuts to his “Yes We Can” 2008 slogan. Then pulls up today’s worsening statics and concludes with the words “No, I Guess You Couldn’t”
Brilliant.
– “sunset” on America would be fitting.
Someone once described a zealot as one who, having lost his sense of direction, redoubles his speed.
Um, folks, we’re still totally clueless as to where we’re going, but the good news is that we’re making even better time than expected!
There is another possible source of the slogan “Forward” that is far more sinister than a football (soccer) team.
Voerwarts, which is a German word meaning “Forward” (and pronounced very much like it), was a radical journal published in Europe in 1844. Among its major contributtors were Karl Marx and his associate Friedrich Engels. As the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorw%C3%A4rts!) points out: The journal was seen as “the most radical” in contemporary Europe…. Many of the activists associated with the paper were also related to the German revolutionary socialist group, the Communist League.
Could Obama’s new slogan be a tribute to an influential radical publication that had many communist writers? I can picture the self-styled elites of the Democratic Party thinking that no one would pick up on this and could use it in safety while quietly chortling to themselves on how clever they were to express their affiliations openly….
“Forward!” is a staple word in the Socialist/Fascist/Communist vocabulary, the, in its day ubiquitous, Soviet equivalent being “Vperiod!” It is a peculiar word with its suggested one-directional, as if unstoppable motion, when what is being left behind does not matter. The problem with tyrannies is that what they do leave behind is a wasteland strewn with corpses, a sort of an elaborate Dali picture, which may well be why the glazed eyes pinned to a distant horizon are the best option after all to at least pretend sanity. (For some reason, The Yawning Heights by A. Zinoviev springs to mind, and his homo sovieticus.)
“Vorwaerts” has ominous as well as funny connotations, albeit the latter only with hindsight. A good mix could be found at http://www.pzg.biz/discontinued_cd031_hitler_jugend.htm; take note of #6 in the CD contents. As the German saying has it, Einmal ist keinmal, so reiteration is quite in place, as in “Forward, forward!” Not only Hitlerjugend, but also Afrika Corps did well with it:
Wir sind das deutsche Afrikakorps
Des Führers verwegene Truppe
…..
Wir trotzen dem Durst und dem Sonnenbrand
Marschieren beim Takt unserer Trommel
Vorwärts, vorwärts
[:Vorwärts mit unserem Rommel!:]
Or did they?
As for Arsenal, much good it did them to go “progressive” – they will be lucky to finish third this season. Hope remains the same will go for the slogan usurper. If one only looks forward, history becomes a foreign land. Especially for the primitive.
“Vorwärts” is also the title of a little song by Baldur von Schirach/Otto Borgmann. ” Vorwärts schmettern die hellen Fanfaren, vorwärts, Jugend kennt keine Gefahren”. It was usually performed by the Hitler Jugend.
I have the impression that members of this White House is not so very knowledgeable in history or German language. What would Henry Kissinger have said about this ?
Spot On, guys.
“Forward” in the socialist/communist sense is a very likely inspiration for this creepy slogan.
Maybe Romney should come back with “LET’s ROLL”
Did anyone else immediately think of the Light Brigade?
More like the Great Leap Forward (Mao) + Lean Forward (MSNBC).
So Obama—whose career started among Maoists (e.g., Ayers & Dohrn), who has surrounded himself with them (e.g., Anita Dunn and Van Jones) until caught out, and who has expressed a certain longing for the dictatorial powers of China’s leader—is actually campaigning to bring about the Great Lean Forward, with his “Red Guards” of Occupy rioters and racist flash mobs to help him.
Interesting association! Like Henry (#10 above) I also picked up on the “Vorwarts” association, but I was thinking more along the lines of Rosa Luxembourg and the Spartacists from the post-Kaiser and pre-Weimar period. But I have to admit Mao’s Great Leap Forward didn’t even register. I just kept thinking of Tennyson’s poem, and the glorious charge that ended in utter annihilation for the Light Brigade.
YES!! If Romney were smart, he would simply say “Obama’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ will put America back at least 30 years, just like Mao’s 20th Century failure.” From that moment on, his multi-million dollar slogan will be unprintable and worthless to him.
great, we’re all Arsenal fans now…!
Well, gun sales are way up, so they say…
We should be. How can any red-blooded American not support an American-owned team that has a cannon in the logo and is called the Gunners?
Or, as I used to quip to an avid fan and my co-player in a totally unrelated sport, “Let’s hit the court and put some arse back in Arsenal!”
- Doubtless you will appreciate it as much as he did, Mr Preston.
Heh. If it would win the Gunners some silverware…
Sisyphus’ motto was also, “Forward”.
Didn’t help him much…
Heh. The opportunist Israeli politial party’s name ‘Kadima’ means ‘forward’. May Obama suffer the same fate as Kadima. Out of power, irrelevant, and chronically bitter.
The first thing that I thought upon seeing this new campaign slogan is that it seemed like something out of the old tool bag of Communist agitprop, you know one of those key words or slogans featured very prominently on one of those old, very colorful and striking propaganda posters showing heroic Communist soldiers, workers, and farmers–sleeves rolled up and determination on their faces–charging forward into the future (and against their enemies.
When the yawning chasm of fiscal crisis lies directly before you, “Forward” is not all that inspirational.
Why is it, that with leftists,they always assume there is only one way ‘Forward’; their way. How myopic, how regressive, how lacking in diversity, can they be?? There are multiple ways forward; always. We have traveled this same leftist path for all of my lifetime. It is well worn. The same thing over and over. No new ideas, just the same product with a new label. It fails. Try to peddle the new product and scream louder this time.
We are at a fork in the road. I’m going forward, just not the leftward one.
May I suggest “Fauxward” as being far more apropos?
Clever.
I wish they had gone with “Winning the Future,” or more appropriately, its online abbreviation: WTF
FAST FORWARD to November 2012.
Obama is so sad…
Forward?
That’s socialist to the core. Of course the MSM will deny it. Sorta like the Hussein thing. One day it’s racist to mention it, the next day it’s absolutely normal. It’s going to get weirder, before it gets better. If it ever gets better.
For whatever reason, the first thing I thought of was The Jewish Daily Forward. And, apparently, so did they: http://blogs.forward.com/forward-thinking/155537/making-room-for-another-forward/
The video is strictly boilerplate. It starts by establishing that everything is Bush’s fault and then presents Obama as our superhero savior. Next it bashes Republicans as the Party of No for a while and then goes for a strong finish by showcasing the Commander-in-Chief. It concludes with a credit roll of Obama’s many accomplishments. Some of things he takes credit for:
$1 Trillion in spending cuts
Protected reproductive rights
US oil production at 8-year high
Natural gas production at all-time high
Iraq war ended
Libya liberated
Osama Bin Laden dead
Medicare and Social Security protected
Auto industry saved
If this video were the only thing an alien civilization knew of us, they would conclude that we are blessed indeed to have such a man.
When I hear “Forward” I think ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’
Backward, more like it.
Mitt Romney vs Barack Obama First Debate Preview!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lUs17azUFs
It’s too bad Obama won’t take a cue from his Crucifixion Chief and fall on his sword (metaphorically speaking). It would save us all time, energy and pain.
This from another comment, here is the link:
Michael Walsh at NRO figured it out:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/297312/about-new-obama-slogan-michael-walsh
Jim-Rose on April 30, 2012 at 4:34 PM
April 30, 2012 3:17 P.M.
“Forward,” that is. I knew that sounded awfully familiar. From Wikipedia:
Vorwärts (“Forward”) was the central organ of the Social Democratic Party of Germany published daily in Berlin from 1891 to 1933 by decision of the party’s Halle Congress, as the successor of Berliner Volksblatt, founded in 1884.
Friedrich Engels and Kurt Tucholsky both wrote for Vorwärts. It backed the Russian Marxist economists and then, after the split in the Party, the Mensheviks. It published articles by Leon Trotsky, but would not publish any by Vladimir Lenin. . .
Vorwaerts lives on today as the house organ of Germany’s leftist SPD; you can read all about its illustrious history here (in German).
And if you don’t think David Axelrod doesn’t know this, you really ought to think again.
They are not even trying to hide it anymore, so you can guess they think they have a winning hand. Heaven help us.
Leading from the rear. Moving forward by rushing backwards.
FWIW, it’s also the state motto of Wisconsin. Hmmm…
Romney’s new campaign slogan: “Empty Trash”
Forward – Obama
Vorwärts – Afrika Korps – Hitler Jugend – Karl Marx – Friedrich Engels
“Vorwärts” – Germany’s Social Democratic Party Newspaper
Great Leap Forward – Mao
The jackass is rubbing our noses in it and there are still those who will not see.
[W3]
Avanti!: Italian Socialist Newspaper still in operation) once under the direction of Benito Mussolini during WW1
how about the movie animal house when john Belushi yells LETS GOOOOOO, and no one follows
Ditto “Avanti” as Mussolini’s slogan. I have an older citation though: According to Wil Cuppy (The Decline and Fall Of Practically Everyone) “En Avant” or “push forward” was the slogan of Madam Dubary. She was the lady who was the Mistress of Louis XIV!