Targeting voters, targeting tones

My mother commented unfavorably on the call tune my 26-year-old daughter has on her cell phone. A short time later, Mom told me how nice it was that H has changed her tune; the piece she has now is so much more pleasing to the ear.

I didn't know what she was talking about. At my address I still gnash my teeth through interminable drug-addled death throes till I can leave my voice mail.

Then I visited my Mom, and happened to phone H from there, and got "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies" while I waited. The little chameleon!

This is the age of the targeted message. Obama's radio ads in Iowa feature white, middle class, middle aged married people, with loud cows in the background. His North Carolina ad is a young black male speaking to rap rhythms.

Which just reminded me of an early '60s television commercial for "Narragansett Lager Beer": A guy walks into a barroom and orders a Narragansett with an annoying Truman Capote falsetto --- which happens to be a dead ringer for the voice of the female bartender. Then a seductive dish sidles up to him on a bar stool and strikes up conversation. The man turns and responds to her in bedroom Cary Grant sonority.

The female bartender, insulted, exclaims: "You were making fun of me!" The man turns to her, and becoming Capote again, points to the coquette and says, "No, I was making fun of her."