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Why We Love The P.R. Guy For Etch A Sketch

Etch A Sketch: The two with knobs on both sides.
Karen Bleier
/
AFP/Getty Images
Etch A Sketch: The two with knobs on both sides.

Martin Killgallon, marketing director for Ohio Arts, we salute you:

"We have a left knob and a right knob," he said of his company's Etch A Sketch, The Associated Press reports, "so we neutrally speak to both parties."

He was commenting, of course, on this week's hottest story from the 2012 Republican presidential campaign — the remark by an aide to Mitt Romney that after the primary season:

"Everything changes. It's almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again."

Republican contender Rick Santorum has been pummeling Romney over that statement. He's called Romney "the Etch A Sketch candidate" and has said that voters might prefer President Obama to someone (Romney) who's going to change his views.

Romney and his advisors, meanwhile, have said that what aide Eric Fehrnstrom meant by the Etch A Sketch comment was that after the primaries the campaign against President Obama begins in earnest and the GOP nominee will "draw sharp contrasts with the president and the president alone."

But we want to commend Killgallon. Killer quotes that are also funny are all too rare, even from public relations professionals.

Well done, sir.

(H/T to NPR's Patrick Cooper.)

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.