Humor & The Campaigns

Here is the newest funny viral video: a MoveOn.com parody of a don't do drugs-type ad with young celebrities advising their friends about dealing with parents who want to vote McCain.

One of the most interesting parts of the 2008 campaign has been the use of viral videos to draw attention and sway opinion. The phenomenon was not new to the 2008 campaign, but it definitely rose to a whole new level with "Yes We Can", which had millions of hits and seemed to capture, especially for a younger, web-savvy generation, the idealistic appeal of Obama. It's probably this video as much as his rallies that also led both Sen. Hillary Clinton and later Republicans to attack Obama as messianic and also rhetorically gifted without beng concrete. As always, the playbook is, take a guy's strengths and show they are weaknesses.

There have been great virals since then; just to name a few -- the Democratic Primary in 8 Minutes, 15 Seconds (a parody of an ad for the TV show "Lost"); the Mike Huckabee/Chuck Norris video, after which his campaign suddenly took off; Paris Hilton's Response to John McCain; Les Misbarack, which set a song from Les Miserables in the Obama campaign office; comedienne Sarah Silverman's foul-mouthed but funny "The Great Schlep", in which she calls on young Jews to go to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote Obama; Tina Fay's take on Sarah Palin; and most recently, the young adult video above.

All these videos have two things in common -- they're funny; and they're all videos for the Obama campaign. As far as I have found, the closest McCain supporters have come to something similar is a variety of videos depicting Obama as a budding Stalinist leader to the song "All Hail the Messiah, Obama Obama", such as this one. Ironically, the song alone is so absurdly wonderful, in some versions it's not clear that it's not Obama supporters who have made it as a joke, rather than McCain backers who mean it as an attack.

With its celebrities waxing poetic and looking oh-so-serious the "Yes We Can" video is prime for parody, actually; but ironically, the only major alternate versions (John.He.Is and No You Can't) have come from Democrats taking aim at McCain.

Really, the only time the Republican Party has hit the funny bone in the last two months intentionally was at the convention. Sarah Palin's comment about lipstick won her big points, and only reinforces the importance of humor on the campaign trail.

To me, it suggests a new playbook is in order. Don't waste your time and money taking down your opponent, especially if there's nothing really there. Rather, get a video camera and a clever script and say something funny.

Jim McDermott, SJ