VIRGINIA POSTREL IS NONE TOO THRILLED

Virginia Postrel is none too thrilled that Al Gore joined the Apple Board:

Maybe I’m nuts, but trying to grow your market share by excluding everyone who doesn’t share hippie-dippy Bay Area politics strikes me as a dumb strategy. Of course, there is a way to make amends: diversify those black-and-white portraits.

She’s taking nominees.

Hey, Rush Limbaugh has said for years that he loves Apple. Talk about thinking different: Apple’s PR firm would have never, ever considered him to be featured in their campaigns. And as I wrote a few months ago, I doubt this guy’s name ever came up in the boardroom, either.

UPDATE (3/21/03): For those people clicking through Virginia’s link, here’s what I emailed her yesterday:

Want a nominee for the Apple portraits? I hate to sound like Floyd R. Turbo, but Rush Limbaugh comes immediately to mind. The guy’s probably sold more Apples to conservatives by simply mentioning repeatedly how much he likes their computers on his radio show than Apple ever would have through their ad campaigns. (At least, he always used to mention he was an Apple man when I listened to his show more regularly a few years ago–I don’t know if he’s now a PC user, but I would doubt it.) Yet there’s a not a shot in hell that they’d consider using him in their advertising.

By the way, they can keep John (he wrote some wonderful songs with the Beatles; frankly, I don’t mind if they lose Yoko), but Virginia’s absolutely right–why not a little diversity in their images? Or, as she wrote yesterday, maybe they do want to exclude everyone “who doesn’t share hippie-dippy Bay Area politics”.