Obama re-election ad: When creepy adults exploit children

Is there a special place in Hell for adults who exploit children for political purposes, stealing their innocence to pimp ideology onto voters? We don’t know. Regardless, it’s pretty darn creepy to ask kids to put a forlorn face on while singing about “fixing” gay people.

Campaign season tends to bring out the worst in people — of all political stripes. That’s why I, Doctor Bizarre, love it. It’s a great opportunity to chronicle the depths politicians and their acolytes will go to in order to sell their brand to the public.

So where did the “The Future Children Project” come from? The San Francisco Gate has answers:

The award-winning ad team that brought you “Got Milk?” and some of America’s most iconic ads have created a touching, memorable — and, yes, slightly terrifying — new spot that stars America’s children. Just in time for Election Day, it’s selling a striking message — about the country’s future.

Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein, whose SF-based Goodby Silverstein & Partners ranks among the country’s most celebrated ad agencies, just released the new spot for their Future Childrens Project — and it’s sure to make some waves.

While it’s encouraging to see the giant red bar of dislikes the video has received on Youtube (also known as the lightsaber of death), it’s still worth noting that men with power and influence are often inclined to use tactics preferred by every infamous authoritarian regime known to man in order to get what they want.

Take a look at some of the lyrics for Goodby and Silverstein’s ad, and then ask yourself whether they are men or monsters for stuffing election year propaganda down the mouths of children. Also, ask yourself what kind of parents would sell out their children for the ad in the first place.

Imagine an America
Where strip mines are fun and free
Where gays can be fixed
And sick people just die
And oil fills the sea

We don’t have to pay for freeways!
Our schools are good enough
Give us endless wars
On foreign shores
And lots of Chinese stuff

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

We haven’t killed all the polar bears
But it’s not for lack of trying
Big Bird is sacked
The Earth is cracked
And the atmosphere is frying

There was a time when adults tried to protect the innocence of children. The early years were something to be cherished. Kids were not meant to be political pawns, and disagreements between adults were kept at the big table. While it seems as though the majority of Americans are still repulsed by efforts to use our most vulnerable citizens as philosophical cannon fodder, their are efforts like a strong undertow by men like Goodby and Silverstein to make everyone “fair game” in the battle for public policy supremacy.

Question: How many takes did this commercial need before it was in the can? How long did it take for Goodby and Silverstein to get their child actors to look as though someone had just killed their parents backstage before forcing them to sing their President Obama re-election jingle? Inquiring minds want to know.

Messrs. Goodby and Silverstein, you are scum. You are more miserable than Gloria Allred. You are even lowlier than Donald Trump, which I didn’t think was humanly possible. Your efforts on behalf of the president have already backfired, and if he loses his bid at re-election you will have played a very small, but noticeable part in pushing independent voters towards Mr. Romney. Congratulations — you are both officially idiots.

 

Jon Stewart and his erotic lubricant made from hundred dollar bills

It’s come to my attention to Jon Stewart has mocked Mitt Romney for his wealth. I find this odd coming from a man who could throw countless hundred dollar bills into a specially made vat that turns U.S. currency into erotic body lubricant, lather himself up in it just for the heck of it, and then call it a day knowing that it didn’t even dent his bank account.

We only get one life, and there’s something a tad distasteful about men who made their millions suddenly mocking others who have done the same, or somehow insinuating that although their American Dream came true that it somehow isn’t in the cards for you — Mr. Average Joe.

Question: What does President Barack Obama, Willard “Mitt Romney, and Jon Stewart all have in common?

Answer: They’re all filthy stinking rich.

Since all of us want different things in life and all of us will die, I don’t begrudge someone who makes boatloads of money, provided they did it through legal means. Why should I believe that Mitt Romney rubs dollar bills in his armpits like it was deodorant each morning because rich guys are all freaks and only care about money, but then contend that President Obama — a very, very rich man who has shown he is very, very ambitious — is somehow different?

Personally, I don’t care about money. I haven’t made it a priority to try and get rich. I like to hang out in the seedy areas of town, under overpasses, and drink cheap liquor with homeless guys and runaways. I like to tell drunk stories over a burn barrel with complete strangers, and then laugh as the night wears on and someone inevitably pisses into the flames, kicking up embers with a stream that sizzles off the hot metal.

To me, that’s worth more than all the royalty checks President Obama will ever cash for one of his two biographies (or the third and fourth once he leaves office).

I won’t ask for Mitt Romney or Barack Obama’s money if they won’t take away my rights to get into all sorts of debauchery with grizzled old men and rebellious youth on the wrong side of the tracks.

Which of the two candidates is more likely to mess with my life? New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is the type of guy who would ban me from giving a homeless guy a sandwich … so I guess I’ll be voting for the guy who least reminds me of Mayor Bloomberg.

In Kubla Khan Barack Obama loved me

I just got back from a trip to China. I go there sometimes, because there are places where the opium dens of old still welcome road-weary Westerners like myself. I follow the trails of men (better men than I) like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and romantic poets in search of kindred spirits. Along the way I wind up in the deep, dark places on the other side of the globe where I can entertain the bizarre side of me that’s just a little too extreme for home, with the little town adjacent to a corn field, where each house has a basketball hoop and no one would ever put up a little sticker in their doorway that said: No Solicitors Allowed.

In China, a country that is infamously controlled by a Communist regime, for the right price you can do just about anything. In a sick and twisted way their corruption grants me the kind of freedom that would be hard to come about stateside. But I digress.

Imagine the surprise upon my return to find out that the president had endorsed gay marriage. It reminded me of a dream I had after a drug-fueled bender, where Chinese prostitutes (or were they North Korean dissidents who were sold into slavery?) patted my head with damp cotton towels and cared for me while the drugs worked their way through my system — it goes without saying I tipped them well.

In my dream the year was 2008. President Obama found me in a dimly lit room, worrying about this and that and any number of things that keep a man up late at night. He ran his fingers through my hair, rested his hands on my cheeks and whispered into my ear that everything was going to be all right. He placed a kiss upon my lips. There, in Kubla Khan, I gave myself up to him. And as I stood there in my most vulnerable state, naked, he talked about unemployment and debt and wars and torture and all those problems that would come to and end if I just stayed in that special place with him forever. He was black and white and gay and straight — young, but not too young, old but not too old — and I decided right then and there: I love this man.

And then I woke up. The wars still raged. The detention centers were still open. The national debt was worse, and millions of Americans were out of a job. I then remembered why I went overseas, on an airline that still allows men to smoke on planes because sane adults know that looking out the window at 30,000 feet as you take a long drag is like nothing else you’ll ever experience.

Airport security is good, but apparently customs doesn’t check to see if you’ve been going old school on opium … yet. I collected my bags, but before I did I caught the news from one of the televisions hanging above a departure gate: the president supports gay marriage. The announcement came during election season. He still believes it’s an issue to be decided upon on a state-by-state basis. Unemployment is over eight percent, and no one seems to notice that the price of peanut butter is outrageous these days (I eat a lot of peanut butter).

I gave myself to you in Kubla Kahn, Mr. President, but it was all just a dream, wasn’t it? It was all just an illusion. A good one, mind you, but an illusion nonetheless. Well, I don’t like pale imitations of the real thing and I won’t get burned again.

Does anyone out there have some opium?

GOP clowns in bayou eye contest with clown-president

The most interesting thing about the Republican primary process at this point isn’t the fact that it’s still going on, but that the top two candidates actually think the general population cares which one of them gets the nod. Rick Santorum won the bayou state last night, to the sound of crickets chirping. And yet, his main rival still found time to send down some clowns to cause trouble:

But Romney aides were on the job Saturday night. In Green Bay, a Romney spokesman, Ryan Williams, showed up at the bar where Santorum was holding his election-night event, to make a few disparaging comments and put the Romney campaign’s spin on events. “This is the saddest, most pathetic victory party I’ve ever seen,” an AP reporter quoted Williams saying. “Where are all the supporters?”

Not long after, Santorum campaign manager Mike Biundo asked Williams to leave, which Williams did. “I didn’t think it was appropriate,” Biundo said later. “They keep wanting to write this race off and say that it’s done, yet they keep sending surrogates to our events to spin the press.

So the guy with the lead has top advisers who refer to him as an Etch-n-Sketch, and the guy in second place continuously takes the bait from news media that want to cast him as a social conservative whack job (e.g., he actually made ridding the America of pornography a priority in a country with $16 trillion in debt). Then, each of them find lame ways to cast the other guy in a negative light and they wonder why there isn’t any enthusiasm on the right side of the fence. Bravo.

In the other corner we have President Obama, who is so politically tone deaf that he can’t even pass a bill that would create an oil pipeline. During a time of high unemployment and sky high gas prices, the guy who went around the country talking about the need for “shovel ready jobs” put his foot down on…digging a massive oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Again, Bravo.

Clowns to the left of me, clowns to the right…here I am. Americans deserve better. Or maybe they don’t, since they keep electing clowns.