The Uzbek Barber Advertising Principle
In the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where the conservative movement is confined to my Uzbek barber, political advertisements are thriving. From a bus stop billboard, Manhattan Mini Storage asks, “Is your closet scarier than Bush’s agenda?” Elsewhere, it’s an announcement: “Your closet’s so narrow it makes Dick Cheney look liberal.” A coffeeshop hosts a storefront display of “Global Warming” and “Disappearing Civil Liberties” coffee mugs. And a phone company offers some version of this: “Psst. Upper West Side latte-drinker. You’re liberal and we love you for it.” For a time I wondered why competitive companies would risk turning off whole segments of their market. But I quickly came to understand that one Uzbek barber is, sadly, not market enough. Unless, of course, it’s a market for mutton.
Garin, there are 2 kind of people in NYC: people from NYC and people from somewhere else.
Now, if you are from NYC, and are old enough to buy a bus ticket — yet still live there — then you must not mind living in an overpriced, overtaxed liberal hellhole, or else you would have left by now.
On the other hand, if you are not from NYC, but moved to NYC, th
… that means you actually left someplace less liberal, less overtaxed, by choice, in order to move to that hellhole.
So, either way, if you are a conservative, you will not live in NYC.
Selection effects, you see.