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They really pulled out none of the stops

I was really, really looking forward to the Obama movie. The man who gave us fainting fans and styrofoam Greek columns was bound to cook up a seventeen-minute cheez-o-rama guaranteed to yield delicious blog ammo for a week.

Oh.

Huh.

Did you watch that thing? I watched it live. I just watched it again. I still have no idea WTF. It’s the weirdest propaganda effort I’ve ever seen.

No stirring music, a sad little guitar playing chords. Some violins. And then Hanks just tells us what happened the last three years, in case we missed it. There was a terrible financial crisis, they passed a bill. Lots of people didn’t have health insurance. They passed a bill. Boy, that vote was close. The GM bailout. Then there was Osama. Tough call. And those two chicks on the Supreme Court. Things are getting better. The end.

How bad was it? Watching it didn’t make me angry.

It didn’t gel. It ain’t aspic. There was no sense that Obama did awesome things that kept the situation from being worse. It’s like he could have traded places with anyone else around the table and things would’ve turned out pretty much the same.

If you thought the last three years was a double-decker awesome burger with extra awesome sauce, then that might be an effective campaign spot. How many people is that, then?

Please…somebody else watch it and tell me I’m not crazy.

Oh, and for anyone much younger than me, much older than me or foreign, this is where the illustration comes from. Warning: famous earworm. Though it’s not as bad as this one from the same people.

Good weekend, folks!

Comments


Comment from Elphaba
Time: March 16, 2012, 11:52 pm

You aren’t crazy. If this is the best the dems can do, they are in deep, deep shit. This just makes Obama look impotent. My favorite part where they state that he faced the crisis without blame. Er…all I remember hearing was “Bush, Bush, Bush, and oh, yeah, Bush!” This is more of a post mortem than an political ad. Pathetic!

“My grandparents taught me that a job is more than just a paycheck.” Ha. His grandparents taught him that jobs are for Grandma, who does all the work while Grandpa lays around and smokes pot with his Marxist cronies.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 16, 2012, 11:58 pm

How bad was it? Watching it didn’t make me angry.

Yeah, that’s about as bad a condemnation as you can really lay at its feet.


Comment from Oldcat
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:05 am

Aaaaaaand But and Or, they’ll get you pretty far!


Comment from Oceania
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:10 am

Good News!
I can now vote in your elections!
Well done me!

I think I’m going to vote for Obama. Because even though he is a knuckle dragging sub-human Mullato Mongoloid … he is destroying your country faster than any war or diaster ever could.
And that’s a big plus for world peace 🙂
Look on the bright side – I’m not even a citizen and I can vote!!!


Comment from USCitizen
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:26 am

Agitprop (play /ˈædʒɨtprɒp/; from Russian: агитпроп [ɐɡʲɪtˈprop]) is derived from agitation and propaganda,[1] and describes stage plays, pamphlets, motion pictures and other art forms with an explicitly political message.

Nicely done.


Comment from JeffS
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:27 am

I’m not even a citizen and I can vote!!!

Yawn. Old news. Ask any illegal immigrant.


Comment from Mono The Elder
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:34 am

Yeah, but if the US is destroyed, Where do you think we’ll go? My vote goes for New Zealand. I hear Kiwi’s taste just like chicken.


Comment from Oceania
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:56 am

Yes but Mono … everything here is about to be run out of Beijing … ask John Key the Evil Shylock Ewe.


Comment from Stark Dickflüssig
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:58 am

Haha, as long as he votes straight ticket (D), my cat can vote until he’s 400 years old. Stick that in your sheep fucking pipe and smoke it.


Comment from Gromulin
Time: March 17, 2012, 1:08 am

All those jingles were ear worms. The one with the girl ice skating figure eights was downright haunting. They’d all be considered jingoistic propaganda these days…so sad.


Comment from Pablo
Time: March 17, 2012, 1:12 am

I blame an utter lack of material to work with.


Comment from Oceania
Time: March 17, 2012, 1:34 am

Exactly … how can you Americans complain of voter fraud in Russia and elswhere, when I’m legally entitled to vote in your country?
Democrazy – isn’t it just grand Mac?


Comment from UrEvilTwin
Time: March 17, 2012, 2:11 am

“It’s like he could have traded places with anyone else around the table and things would’ve turned out pretty much the same.”

I’m spit ballin here. but that was their point, wasn’t it? That no matter who was in the W.H., things would still be this bad, so why not put Barry back in the game. U know, it’s not his fault. Doesn’t matter, I’m votin for the rich guy with cool hair or the fat smartypants guy. Can’t decide.


Comment from Oceania
Time: March 17, 2012, 2:23 am

Well, ideally you should vote for Dr Ron Paul … as he is the only sane one. However my interest are not for your countries interests or sanity. Nor are the rest of us that are registered to vote in your upcoming elections.
I see a big spread on Russia Today about how Kiwis have been voting in your elections … and how that your democratic processes are ‘rigged’.


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: March 17, 2012, 3:29 am

There, now. That’s what happens when you feed them! Fourteen comments, four troll–increasingly shrill and offensive because you stopped feeding it and it needs to attract attention.

Yeah. I know. One of those irritating facts of life that you can’t even acknowledge the problem without adding fuel to the fire. Why Stoaty Doesn’t Attempt to Cut if Off. It’s like kudzu in the American South, only more so.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: March 17, 2012, 4:06 am

Kony 2012/ Obama 2012.

There is wheat, there is chaff, there is kudzu, and there is Leni Riefenstahl.

And evidently Barack has blocked me from commenting on his vid. Which is strange, since it’s the very first time I’ve ever visited it.

And Oceania is kudzu.


Comment from EZnSF
Time: March 17, 2012, 4:12 am

P.S.

and THIS guy gets 1,174 thumbs up for this crap?

http://www.youtube.com/user/PolishPunk04/videos

I give up. We’re doomed.


Comment from enter sandman, nothing to see here
Time: March 17, 2012, 5:24 am

I added my snide comments to the loser film on Pewtube. Pretty sure Ozero fanboys and Leni Riefenstahl fans were hardest hit. I said the real Marxist Black President was MIA, on the down low, being a politician and sh*t. All incognegro and stuff.
Meh. Sure my pewtube inbox will swell with the rantings of righteous indignation from the Zerobots. Oh well.

Gonna have a satellite dedicated just to following me around fore this is all over.


Comment from enter sandman, nothing to see here
Time: March 17, 2012, 5:26 am

* I denounce myself*

Rrrrrrrrrraaaaaaaacccccccccciiiiiiiiissssssssttttttt!!!!!!


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 17, 2012, 12:56 pm

Oh, they’re definitely gatekeeping the comments on the YouTube version. They only allowed a few positive ones through immediately after it aired, and then shut it down.


Comment from Argentium G. Tiger
Time: March 17, 2012, 1:20 pm

Something for you to enjoy this fine Saturday, Stoatie:

YouTube: Dueling Banjos on musical Tesla Coils

(hat tip to the “Small Dead Animals” blog)


Comment from Formerly known as Skeptic
Time: March 17, 2012, 1:29 pm

If you really want too learn something, you can’t beat “The Preamble” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKhRERqPS4

Schoolhouse Rock is the reason I had it memorized YEARS before I cared about politics. The world’s greatest run-on sentence!


Comment from Bob Mulroy
Time: March 17, 2012, 4:40 pm

Those two songs will be going in my head all day!

Thanks.


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: March 17, 2012, 4:57 pm

FkaSkeptic,

Wow that was a blast from the past. I loved Schoolhouse Rock when I was a kid. I wonder if it is still on TV?

I found all the song lyrics here
http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/
The song called “Tyrannosaurus Debt” is perfectly adorable.


Comment from JeffS
Time: March 17, 2012, 5:39 pm

Feynmangroupie, here’s the live version.


Comment from Randy Rager
Time: March 17, 2012, 8:41 pm

New Zealand? They’re still a country? Who knew?

Hey, I bet if they promise to speak English, President Santorum will let them apply for statehood!

I doubt the application would go through. Who the hell wants another state full of sheepshaggers? We already have Utah.


Comment from Feynmangroupie
Time: March 17, 2012, 9:03 pm

Jeff,

I watched it before posting the link to the lyrics.

Oh yeah, and when I described it as “perfectly adorable,” I was talking about how cute it was that they were admonishing D.C. for allowing the debt to get to 4 trillion. Ah, those were the good ole’ days. I also found it interesting that it was made in 1996 (according to the website), and that it only mentions two events as contributors to the debt, that being the Civil War and WWI. One could assume that they were more interested in words that rhymed than an un-biased view of the economic decisions that lead to that particular amount.
Were it me writing the song, I would most likely have pointed the finger at FDR and WWII as the greatest contributors. Mind you, I’m looking at this from the 1996 perspective.

A fun* game would be to look at this http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt.htm and posit what tangibles/intangibles we procured which might have caused the debt to increase.

*paper cuts-type fun


Comment from Redd
Time: March 17, 2012, 10:31 pm

I wanted to visit the British Library site but typed in British Museum by error. It’s all islamislamislamislamislam.


Comment from Bill (the .003% of your traffic from AfStan)T
Time: March 19, 2012, 5:31 pm

Warning: famous earworm.

“I’m just a Bill,
Yes, I’m only a Bill,
And I’m sitting here in a drafty, dusty barracks room on the north side of Kabul getting slammed by frigid winds pouring out of the Hindu Kush amusing myself by typing this in between power outages while I wait for another rocket to spray fragments and gravel against my window sill.”

Ta-daaaaaah! No more earworm, right?


Comment from Can’t hark my cry
Time: March 19, 2012, 5:47 pm

Good to know you’re still with us, Bill. . .


Comment from Bill (the .003% of your traffic from AfStan)T
Time: March 19, 2012, 7:17 pm

Thanks, Can’t hark.

I figger I’ve a fair shot at making it outta here under my own steam as long as Mrs. Peel doesn’t nominate me for the Dead Pool…


Comment from BigBluBug (-)
Time: March 19, 2012, 8:42 pm

A noun’s a special kind of word,
it’s anything you’ve ever heard,
I find it quite interesting,
a noun’s a person place or thing.

There was also a thing with a dog on Hudson street. There
was a bone involved and shit got real yo.


Comment from BigBluBug (-)
Time: March 19, 2012, 8:43 pm

And a ferry and some other stuff but it was the 70’s and I was kinda toasted most of the time.


Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: March 19, 2012, 10:50 pm

Apparently this film was so bad even the Washington Post and Politifact are tearing it apart for its… factual challenges.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: March 19, 2012, 11:11 pm

Heya, Bill. Good to see you in one piece.


Comment from Bill (the .003% of your traffic from AfStan)T
Time: March 20, 2012, 4:13 pm

Thanks — the two-piece flight suit is more practical, but the one-piece is more comfor–

Oh. “In. one. piece.”

Never mind.

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