Colors in politics
For a very long time, red has been the color of the Left. But in America today it is the color of Republicans. How come? It was a bit of Leftist "cleverness" by some media types in (I think) the year 2000, when they put up TV projections of the vote on election night that reversed what was customary and displayed GOP-leaning States in red -- part of the unending quest for change that characterizes Leftists.
In the graphic below, an election-night projection from the recent British election, you will note that party colors follow tradition in Britain. Conservatives are true blue. The only dubious bit about British practice below is showing the Scottish Nationalists in yellow. Why? The only reason I can think of is that it is more polite than showing them in their true colors -- Fascist brown.
Given the love of change for the sake of change that we often seem to see on the Left, I wonder if some bright spark will in due course revert to the original colors for TV displays?
Being a male, blue is of course my favorite color so I am rather pleased to see in operetta that blue eyes are often described as treu, variously translatable as loyal, faithful, reliable, honorable, trustworthy. I say more about that here.
Operettas all date from before WWII, however, so they could say things that would not be allowed today. Just mentioning blue eyes is probably "racist" these days. I seem to have gotten away with talking about iris pigmentation, however -- which is the same thing.
And we all know of course that blacks are no longer "colored" -- the NAACP excepted.
6 comments:
I'm fairly certain that the switch to portraying Republicans as red in the US was intended as a poke in the eye at the time, describing anti-communists as being the traditional commie color, essentially labeling them "Reds."
Didn't work, though.
Actually, the color standard for years in US Presidential elections was blue for the incumbent party and red for the challenging party. For instance, in the 1980 election, red states were for Reagan, blue for Carter. Then in 1984, blue for Reagan, red for Mondale. It wasn't until after the 2000 election that red became Republican and blue Democrat.
The red states give me the blues.
UKIP was screwed by the system well and truly. But overall votes don't count in individual seats. If you don't get enough votes in each seat to be first past the post then you don't get elected.
There's bound to be some changes to the UK electoral system when fewer votes could result in so many more Parliamentary seats for the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) (50+) than the many more votes that UKIP got which resulted in only ONE seat - and when SNP can't be voted for outside Scotland and has the goal of dismembering the UK.
I can remember back when some crack-pots were claiming Pink is a soothing color Way out in nutty town they are
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