Brand New World

(Originally published on 1/23/20)

Leave it to modern-day hipsters to speak of “branding” as if it was some original and compelling concept. Once upon a time, we decidedly less-hip Homo sapiens called it “advertising.” If you grew up in the New York City metropolitan area in the 1970s and 1980s, for instance, “Crazy Eddie,” a consumer electronics chain, is likely a business you remember. Why? Because Crazy Eddie, so named after its uber-crooked founder Eddie Antar, had one helluva brand.

A loud and obnoxious TV pitchman, radio deejay Jerry Carroll, inundated local airwaves for fifteen years with frenzied but always-memorable commercials like “Christmas in August.” Crazy Eddie’s abiding selling point was that he would “beat any price” and that, when all was said and done, his prices were “Insane!” Yes, those were simpler times and anybody who was anybody with a television set had this notion that Crazy Eddie was “practically giving [his merchandise] away.”

Sadly, we live in a brand new world—a post-Crazy Eddie one—that is crazier than ever. I can’t help but bemoan Major League Baseball’s contemporary brand, which is awash in analytics that immeasurably detract from the game. The professional sport is also surveilled as never before, with ubiquitous cameras poking their lenses into intimate nooks and crannies where they shouldn’t be. Modern technology goes a long way in explaining why the champs are cheats and why my beloved team from yesteryear, the Mets, hired a manager, who—as things turn out—won’t even make it to spring training.

Yes, it was a better time for baseball and a lot of other things when my favorite Mets’ team, the 1973 National League Champions, was managed by Yogi Berra, who prophetically proclaimed that year how it “ain’t over ‘til it’s over!” This baseball legend and sage also said that managing could be reduced to two things: Knowing when to take a pitcher out of a game and keeping your players happy. The analytics crowd would no doubt find fault with Yogi’s simple take on the matter, which he arrived at, by the way, without ever looking over a spreadsheet.

And now for a completely different lament: on presidential politics. This week I revisited a book on the subject from 1988 entitled “Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars?” by political reporters Jack W. Germond and Jules Witcover who—every four years for a spell—co-authored a behind-the-scenes tome on the presidential campaign from the primaries to the general election. They were books for political junkies for sure—inside baseball and page-turners in an age before the Internet and 24/7-cable news.

Anyway, I read a few chapters on Gary Hart, who was the Democratic front-runner in 1988 after surprising one and all with a gritty showing against Walter Mondale four years earlier. As the press delved more into his somewhat puzzling personal life and chronic wandering eye, however, Hart didn’t wear well as the man to beat. As an idealistic college kid in 1984, I enthusiastically supported the youthful underdog, Hart, waging battle with the heir apparent dullard, Mondale, who ultimately prevailed in the Democratic primaries but then got trounced by Ronald Reagan in November.

Interestingly, Gary Hart was essentially saying in 1988 that character was a whole lot less important than positions on the issues. This stroll down memory lane set me to wondering whatever became of Hart? I found an interview with him on YouTube from a couple of years ago. He looked now like a man in his eighties, but not bad, and is still married to his wife, Lee, and has been for over sixty years. Understandably, Hart clearly retains some bitterness about his treatment in 1988 and couldn’t help but compare then with now. The character issue—so paramount in press circles thirty years ago—and a President Trump three decades later. How do you like them apples? Honestly, could you conceive of a man with worse character and unfitness for the presidency than the Donald? You know what: I think Gary Hart is a man of character and would have made a pretty good president in that old world. In fact, in the brand new one he's about the right age to contend in the Democratic primaries.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)