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out of sequence
Mar. 5th, 2008 11:40 amThis is a specialized post inserted prior to the succession of 500-word short but tedious educational screeds. It is just short of a jeu d'esprit, and is not one only because I am more serious about it than I have any right to be. I wrote it mostly to relieve the tension as America faces the prospect of the first brokered national political convention in decades, accompanied by a condition of crisis greater than anyone is willing to admit.
If Ron Drummond can post reading lists for Obama, I can post TV ads. Ads for all three current candidates, to be fair and impartial. (But not necessarily balanced.)
Actually, there are four, but Ralph Nader can write his own goddamn ads.
Anyone who wants to have a go at making guerrilla versions of these with iMovie or some such, and posting to YouTube, feel free, except that of course you can’t put words in the candidates’ mouths so you would have to find appropriate existing clips.
It is more likely that the scripts will be passed over in embarrassed silence.
Their purpose is to serve as a reminder that there are issues the candidates OUGHT to be mentioning, though not very specifically because that is hard to do in a 60-second spot (I haven’t figured out if you can squeeze these into format, either).
The problem Clinton and Obama now have is how to knock the other candidate out of the race, without the loser handing the opposition a ready-made ad campaign against the winner. The problem McCain has is how to oppose two different candidates at the same time.
So ads need to be crafted that will be sort of negative, but in such a positive context that there isn’t really any campaign ammunition being provided unnecessarily. The campaigns on the Democratic side are riding on sheer excitement plus the creation of images in voters’ minds designed to tip the balance in favor of one candidate over the other, while also implicitly skewering the current occupant of the oval office.
I have done the campaigns the courtesy of pretending that moles in the ad agencies have tipped off the campaigns, so each ad already implicitly responds to the issues raised by the other two.
I have done this because I think the current rhetoric is really, really dumb, albeit efficacious, and I would like to prod the campaigns to do something less stupid than, say, duelling red telephones. Even though those seem to have worked.
One or two phrases in these ads verge on parody, but it is impossible to parody political advertising because the most successful ads operate at a visceral level that already strikes sophisticated viewers as parody.
I have also tried to adapt the ads to the basic styles and strategies of the three campaigns, which I shall not open myself to critique by trying to summarize here.
I have the uneasy feeling that I may have stolen one of these ads from someone’s past campaign, and it probably didn’t work then, either.
So here goes. You have been warned.
( ads? )
If Ron Drummond can post reading lists for Obama, I can post TV ads. Ads for all three current candidates, to be fair and impartial. (But not necessarily balanced.)
Actually, there are four, but Ralph Nader can write his own goddamn ads.
Anyone who wants to have a go at making guerrilla versions of these with iMovie or some such, and posting to YouTube, feel free, except that of course you can’t put words in the candidates’ mouths so you would have to find appropriate existing clips.
It is more likely that the scripts will be passed over in embarrassed silence.
Their purpose is to serve as a reminder that there are issues the candidates OUGHT to be mentioning, though not very specifically because that is hard to do in a 60-second spot (I haven’t figured out if you can squeeze these into format, either).
The problem Clinton and Obama now have is how to knock the other candidate out of the race, without the loser handing the opposition a ready-made ad campaign against the winner. The problem McCain has is how to oppose two different candidates at the same time.
So ads need to be crafted that will be sort of negative, but in such a positive context that there isn’t really any campaign ammunition being provided unnecessarily. The campaigns on the Democratic side are riding on sheer excitement plus the creation of images in voters’ minds designed to tip the balance in favor of one candidate over the other, while also implicitly skewering the current occupant of the oval office.
I have done the campaigns the courtesy of pretending that moles in the ad agencies have tipped off the campaigns, so each ad already implicitly responds to the issues raised by the other two.
I have done this because I think the current rhetoric is really, really dumb, albeit efficacious, and I would like to prod the campaigns to do something less stupid than, say, duelling red telephones. Even though those seem to have worked.
One or two phrases in these ads verge on parody, but it is impossible to parody political advertising because the most successful ads operate at a visceral level that already strikes sophisticated viewers as parody.
I have also tried to adapt the ads to the basic styles and strategies of the three campaigns, which I shall not open myself to critique by trying to summarize here.
I have the uneasy feeling that I may have stolen one of these ads from someone’s past campaign, and it probably didn’t work then, either.
So here goes. You have been warned.
( ads? )
