Amateur hippies better than professional conservatives at creating ads
Published January 07, 2004
I know conservatives are very challenged when it comes to expressing creativity. You can tell by how many of them think that South Park is produced by the Republican National Committee. (Don't tell them--it's all they've got.)
This Blogcritics thread discusses the need for welfare for conservative artists, as so few have enough talent to make a living.
Now that it is possible to harness the talents of many people via the internet, I think it just might be the end of Republicans as we know them. They always have more money than the Democrats. They significantly outspent Dems in the last presidential election and still lost by 500,000 votes. Money is their main edge. People give them a lot of it, then Republican politicians reward them out of our Treasury.
But the Dems might not need so much money now that people can donate talents more easily to campaigns. There is no cap on volunteering.
The MoveOn.org ads are a stunning example of what can be achieved. I was a judge in the first round, and I saw a lot of really crappy ads. I had no idea there would be so many gems. While I don't like all 15 finalists, some are as good as any political ads I've seen.
Compare with this current ad from the right wing Club for Growth. (Direct Real Player link.)
Here's the thing that's encouraging: Some people submitted ads to MoveOn.org that compared Bush to Hitler in a very heavy-handed, off-putting way. And the MoveOn membership rejected those ads in the first round. They didn't make it even close to the finals. MoveOn.org members saw immediately how crappy they were.
But these right-wingers at the Club for Growth apparently saw their horrible, horrible ad, complete with bad acting and a ham-fisted script, and they thought it was just dandy.
It gives this liberal hope.
[via Boing Boing]
UPDATE: CalPundit points to this parody of the MoveOn ads. It's only slightly more over the top than the Club for Growth ad.
- Amateur hippies better than professional conservatives at creating ads
- Published: January 07, 2004
- Type:
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Culture: Media
- Writer: Brian Flemming
- Brian Flemming's BC Writer page
- Brian Flemming's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
Yeah, I think they use iMovie for this. Well, now that you have to shell out $49 for the software, I doubt the hippies will afford it anymore.
Steve,
Of the finalists, I like Child's Pay, In My Country, Polygraph, What Are We Teaching Our Children?, Desktop, and Imagine. Imagine gives me chills.
And, yes, I think all could be improved, and my guess is the winner will be polished up before broadcast.
Tom,
Dude, get over it! iLife's a great bargain. Any one of those programs is worth 50 bucks. GarageBand is probably worth $150, compared to the alternatives. I use Reason ($400), and it can't do some of the things GarageBand does.
On Windows you'd pay a fortune for this stuff.
And I don't like people coming over to my threads and taking the Lord's name in vain like this. I mean Steve Jobs'.
Keep that sacrilege where it belongs.
I finally got to see that Iowa ad, and thought two things: it's obviously a clip from SNL or the Reptile National Committe thinks their core constituency in 'murrica's heart-attack land is ignorant, illiterate, old, bad tasting (hey, even reptilian aliens need to eat) and basically full of shit.
Time to strike Iowa off the list of places to visit in the States (oh, wait, it was never on the list in the first place - Iowa was on the short bus list).
Iowans seemed nice enough when I was there. It's not a bad place - pleasant, rolling farmland; the bridges of Madison County; James T. Kirk's birthplace; and an erotic statue right next to their Capitol building. I think that obnoxious ad is misrepresentative.
I'm sure the geography of Iowa is fine (if I recall correctly it used to be sea-bottom in a previous era). However, it is the people I have a problem with. Sort of like Vancouver, nice place, shame about the people.
Of course, on my last visit there, I got chased down the street by a pimp after answering a hooker's query for date with: "75 bucks, you'll have to pay me more than that".
I am new to the internet and I am surfing here and this is so neat. I did a search in the search engines on "a professional blog" and I found your web blog.
I am a chartered accountant in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada and thus my interest in searching for "a professional blog" on the WWW.
I just wanted to see how the rest of the world thinks and see what trends and technology are happening in the world. I also was interested in a blog for myself, that is if I figured I could handle the technology of operating a blog. The different things discussed on a website found by searching for "professional blog" in the search engine is very amusing reading.
Respectly yours
Stephen J.
A Halifax Chartered Accountant
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/11531)
Which ones do you like and dislike?
I just watched a tape of all of them once and need to watch them a few more times.
On first look, some are pretty bad while others could be improved.
I wonder if it would have been better for moveon.org to ask for scripts and storyboards and then work with the finalists to produce the most effective ads.