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Nursery rhyme attack ads

by Adam Finley, posted Nov 14th 2006 2:03PM

humpty dumptyLike death, taxes and Web surfers with strong opinions about The View, negative campaign ads are an inevitable force. Shortly before the midterm elections, NPR's All Things Considered spoke with two of the men (Dennis Steele and Scott Sanders) who lend their dark, ominous voices to those attack ads, and you can listen to the interview here. I know what you're thinking: if I can't stand those ads, why the heck would I want to listen to the voiceover artists talk about them?

Tell you what: skip to about three minutes into the interview and you'll see why. They asked the men to read nursery rhymes using their "attack ad" voice, and the result is not only pretty damn funny, it also shows how silly these ads can be, and that slapping a spooky voice and some foreboding music over something can make just about anything seem scary. Most of us probably roll our eyes when these negative ads flash across out TV screens, but listening to someone attack the likes of Humpty Dumpty with the same venom as they would someone running for congress proves that these ads are actually much more ludicrous than we thought.

Completely unrelated, but interesting to me, nonetheless: in the nursery rhyme "Humpty Dumpty," Humpty is never once referred to as an egg.

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James Kabala

The claim that nursery rhymes are historical allegories is not believed by most modern scholars.

November 14 2006 at 7:31 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Thomas Long

You also might want to read Heavy Words Lightly Thrown by Chris Roberts. It's all about the origins and actual meanings behind popular nursery rhymes. For instance, Humpty Dumpty is generally considered to be about a cannon mounted on the walls of a church in Colchester, blown up during the English Civil War.

November 14 2006 at 4:59 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Fred

You might find this interesting:

http://www.answerbag.com/q_view.php/43333

November 14 2006 at 3:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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