Focus Group Fills Football Stadium, Screams Out Slogans
How inspiring might it be to hear a vast, enthusiastic crowd gathered in a stadium chanting over and over, “Perhaps we can! Perhaps we can!”?
Or the same crowd chanting this: “Maybe we can! Maybe we can!”
That was the scene last week at the high school stadium in Eurida, New Mexico, a small farming and ranching community equidistant from El Paso, Amarillo and Albuquerque. More than 10,000 people, who were each paid $25 and received a free lunch, shouted themselves hoarse chanting what sounded like future Barack Obama campaign slogans.
The news media were not invited to the rally, and participants signed confidentiality agreements. Nevertheless, some Eurida residents, eager to bask in the limelight of their unusual experience, offered details.
“We chanted a lot of things,” said a 55-year-old woman who identified herself as Granny One Shoe. “There was ‘Yes we can’, of course. But there were others. ‘No we can’t.’ ‘Why the Hell should we?’ ‘No we won’t, Oscar.’ ‘No way, Jose.’ ‘You gotta be kidding, Holmes.’ That was the weirdest. What does Sherlock Holmes have to do with the next election?”
Zeb, who identified himself as a farmer who is too poor to buy gasoline for his tractor, said the most interesting slogan the crowd shouted was “No she can’t. No she can’t.” He also liked “Hit the Mit” and “Muck the Huck”. “That muck business was a little close to the edge, but it sure cracked everybody up. It could be a pretty catchy slogan, if you get my drift.”
“It seemed to me they’re sort of gearing up for the next election and imagining who the Republicans will run,” Zeb said. “I was sort of waiting for them to have us chant something about Palin that went farther than ‘No she can’t’. I guess the closet we got was when they had us shouting ‘Barbie, Batbie, Barbie.’”
Sandra, who identified herself as a teacher, said most of the crowd missed the subtlety of the “Barbie” chant. “It wasn’t ‘Bar-bie’, ‘Bar-bie.’ It was ‘Baaar-bie’, ‘Baaar-bie’. It was sarcastic. ‘Baaaaar-bie’. It was biting, sort of nasty. You could see who has ‘em worried as far as the next election is concerned.”