Apparently he recently got himself some promoted Tweets on Twitter. If you didn't know, the way "Promoted Tweets"works are that people pay for them to appear at the top of search results, no matter the search.
This is fantastic publicity most of the time. However, one always has to be careful about what search results are bringing up particular tweets.
Old Mitt's happened to show up a few weeks ago when "President Snow" was a trending topic on Twitter.
Now for those of you in the audience who have avoided knowing anything The Hunger Games, here's the short deal. President Snow is the bad guy. Like, a really bad guy. Like a dictator who forces small children to fight to the death like gladiators.
That is not really the "President" Mitt probably hoped he would be compared to on the internet.
Oh well, you win some, you get compared to fictional, evil dictators some.
The Romney camp posted a video on youtube which portrayed Perry as a bumbling, incompetent fool. Or as Talking Points Memo put it, Romney "Bushified" him.
The video was widely derided by journalists and bloggers as maybe just a little too mean. Before the end of the day, the video had been taken off the web.
But anyone who knows anything about a) the internet and b) teenage gossip political commentary knew straight away that this story was anything but dead.
All I could think while watching this fiasco play out was: did Mitt Romney learn anything from the seminal, mid-2000s, Canadian-made teen drama Degrassi?
Bear with me here.
Degrassi is completely full of helpful life lessons, watch it sometime. However, the specific episode I'm referring to occurs in season 5 when resident good-girl-gone-(Canadian-version-of)-bad Manny gets intoxicated and shows her lady business on camera...
...thus learning the hard way that once a video is up on the internet it never dies.
So if you have even an inkling that you may not want something up on the internet for ever and ever, maybe you should sit on it for a few minutes. Give it a second to make sure you really want everyone in the whole world to be able to see what you're thinking
Now, I learned this lesson through the equivalent of a soap opera for teens when I was 16. How had no one in the Romney camp learned this yet?
After Manny's "Girls Gone Wild" episode, her reputation was completely tarnished for the rest of the season. It was heartbreaking. The worst part was how every time Manny met a new character for the rest of the series, the poor girl had to be reminded of her indiscretion. Manny went down in Degrassi infamy, and she wasn't even running for political office, for Pete's sake!
The only question left for Romney is how long is he going to have to deal with his own lapse of judgement. Yes, he took the video off the internet. But as evidenced by the fact that I'm able to post it in this blog, it's not that hard to find.
More than anything, this video, coupled with Romney's childish behavior at the debate last week, has started painting a portrait of Romney as something of a jerk. And everyone knows there are many qualities we will accept in our president, but being an ass isn't really one of them.
In an election season devoid of any substantive scandals, the effect of a video like this about as close to that of a candidate showing their lady goods for the camera: their reputation is irrevocably tarnished. And taking the video down did little to repair the damage.
In an election as close as this one is, an error that calls the candidates' personality into question even for a second is one they can't afford to make.
Moral of the story: when the camera's on, it's best to keep one's private parts and mean thoughts about Rick Perry to oneself. And if that video does somehow get made, for God's sake, keep it off the internet.
Rick Perry released this new campaign ad yesterday:
After watching an ad like this a person really just has to sit back and marvel for a moment. I have seen many political ads in my life, but I have seen very few that are this intense and say this much nothing. Out of two minutes, I was able to glean three bits of information.
1. Presiden Obama is a zero. There were several helpful, sometimes subliminal, images with the word "zero" in them. Like this one...
and this one...
And in case those visual aids weren't enough, at 0:30 there is a very helpful, ominous, disembodied voice which says "President Zero."
The viewer is then bombarded with the statistic that "One in six Americans is living in poverty":
And to put it a different way:
And just in case you were unaware of the implications of one in six people living in poverty, they're bad:
So now we know that's bad.
From this section we've established one very clear fact: President Obama equals zero. Got it.
2. In 2012...something about horses.
Upon first viewing, I immediately thought, "Oh, Rick Perry is strong and rugged, like a horse running through a murky river. Bingo." But then I rethought. Perhaps what I was supposed to glean was that Rick Perry was strong and rugged like the cowboy riding the horse through the river. However, I then realized that without the handy youtube.com video title telling me this was an ad for Rick Perry, at this point, I would still have no idea what this was about. There is literally no mention of Rick Perry, elections, campaigns, or Republicans by this point in the video. For all I know after 45 seconds of this video, this is an ad for a new zombie movie. It even has the classic "swings-swinging-ominously-in-the-wind" shot:
So I guess without the unfair advantage of the video title, I would have not been able to make any conclusions about the horses. Therefore, I must strike this from the list of things I learned from this video.
3. 2. Rick Perry Is the WORLD'S LAST HOPE.
This inspiring image comes right after Rick Perry says something about America being the WORLD'S LAST HOPE. And since we, as viewers, now know that this video is about Rick Perry, this flag imagery is so much more powerful:
AMERICA
PATRIOTISM
STOICISM
RICK PERRY AND AMERICA
Obviously, RICK PERRY IS AMERICA. Therefore, RICK PERRY IS THE WORLD'S LAST HOPE.
Two solid minutes of video and I was only able to learn two things. Who made this?
That would be Mr. Lucas Baiao, the same man behind this ad for Tim Pawlenty, which is also incredibly intense while saying absolutely nothing. He's like the Michael Bay of political ads.
There are very few things in the world I find as absurd as campaign ads. I'm used to them pandering to the lowest common denominator: they're angry, manipulate statistics, play to peoples' fear, and pick the most ridiculous photos of politicians possible. But this new brand of theatrical, over-the-top, movie trailer-esque ad is just way too much for me. While watching this, I kept thinking of the trailer for the movie 2012.
The similarities are striking. Biblical references:
An embattled black president:
And a force of nature overtaking the White House:
In one video the force of nature is a tidal wave, in the other it's Rick Perry; same thing, right?
WRONG.
Dear political campaigns, please tell me things in your ads. Please.
It's hard being a political junkie. It's very much like watching a car crash: you desperately want to look away but you just can't--even though it's making your stomach hurt--and you sort of feel like crying--and you're suddenly questioning your humanity and the humanity of all those around you.
So after years of trying to contain these feelings of despair and desperation, I have discovered the only way to continue fully participating in our nation's political system without completely losing my faith in everything. I have to mock it mercilessly.
In preparation for beginning to publish my own political humor blog I took to the internet to get a better feel for the territory. What I learned was that most of today's political humor falls into two, often overlapping, categories: painfully, obviously partisan and downright cruel.
Therefore my goal in this blog is two-fold:
1. Catharsis. Honestly, I don't think I can watch another political debate without making jokes about it and not pull my hair out. (It's called a debate for a reason Mr. Gingrich. You're actually supposed to argue. That's the point.)
2. To provide a moderate, satirical voice out there for everyone who thinks that maybe, just maybe, stupidity knows no political boundaries.
I must admit that, come election time, I vote pretty solidly Democratic. Yet while I may agree with many liberal ideals, politicians are politicians and therefore, quite stupid a lot of the time.
In conclusion, I hope this blog is going to help me not become insane as well as maybe keeping a few other people from going insane. It might even be kind of fun. Maybe you'll laugh. We can only hope.
New posts will be published every Monday at the very least.
Since this blog is very much a work in progress I welcome suggestions or tips! Feel free to submit any comments or questions about the content and format.
Cait
UPCOMING STORIES: Michelle Bachmann vows that as president she will not to care about you or anyone else!
