Antenna Flags

Although it's not chic in the east or west coast metropolitan areas of the U.S., patriotism sells in this part of the country. This is a used car lot I noticed along my commute to work today. Alaska can certainly be characterized as a part of "red state America". Even though much of the world is more savvy to American politics than Americans are to world politics (That's certainly true for me with regard to the blips about the recent UK elections) I should explain the term red vs blue state for the benefit of our non-US brethren.

Whenever there are national elections here, the television networks display a national map showing which states are "decided" designating the states that voted Republican (ROC) red and Democratic (LOC) blue. The interesting thing to me is that those color designations are not self imposed by the political parties. Their banners are typically indistinguishable based on color with variable distribution of red, white, and blue reflecting the national flag colors. Sometime in the late 70s, early 80s when color television becoming ubiquitous, the networks just started coloring their political maps that way. There are some who believe that the television news producers who arguably then and now lean left assigned the republicans the color of red as that color had a negative connotation at the time given the association of the color red to the Soviet Union.

It would not surprise me as virtually nothing in the entertainment industry (mark my words, television news is entertainment) is by chance.

That was a pretty random thought tract, but I know I figured you might appreciate a flavor of Alaska beyond beautiful mountains, moose, and 4x4 pickup trucks.

Wasilla, Alaska