Obama the Salt Salesman

It is clear that Obama has kindled a fire with the young voters of America. It was the young and the Black vote that enabled Obama to ride to a 14-point victory in North Carolina yesterday. He has managed to sell our young and idealistic youth on his vision of change. Blacks see him as the first Black candidate to have a chance to win the Presidency, and Obama captured 92% of their vote. Blacks turned out in record numbers to support Obama.

With the Blacks voting only for skin color, and the young White population mesmerized by his rhetoric, Obama is assured the Democratic nomination unless something drastic happens. In my search for an analogy to Barack Obama to spotlight his conquest of these groups, I thought of Ron Popeil the inventor of the Veg-O-Matic. Ron has been mesmerizing T.V. audiences for years selling different products from kitchen knives to the "Set it and forget it" rotisserie oven. But Ron Popeil is not the analogy that fits Obama. At least Ron Popeil, being a talented salesman, sells things that are useful. Then I remembered the old 'Salt Salesman' joke. Obama's ability to sell to the idealistic young and capture the almost 100% loyalty of the Black population can only be attributed to his talents as a salesman. The old Joke goes like this:

A man goes to the grocery store to buy a bottle of Ketchup.
Searching through the store, he finds nothing but salt. There was rock salt, block salt, ice-cream salt, and seasoned salt. The store shelves were packed with every kind of salt made. But he could not find any Ketchup or other groceries.

He walks up to the storeowner and inquires if this is a grocery store or a salt store. The storeowner proclaims it to be a grocery store and asks what the man needed. "A bottle of Ketchup please." said the man.

The storeowner opens up a cellar door and quickly retrieves a bottle of Ketchup. After thanking the store owner for the help, the man commented to the store owner, "You must sell a lot of salt!" to which the store owner replied, "No, I don't sell hardly any salt, but the fellow who sells me salt, really sells the salt!"

The moral here is that Obama has nothing useful to sell, but he sure does a good job selling it.

Cheers,
-Robert-