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Exploitation for Fun and Profit: The Obama Way

By medusa on November 2, 2008 at 8:30 AM in Advertising, Barack Obama

I’ve always been a fan of British humor and the October 31st Times Online review of Obama’s infomercial, written by Chris Ayers is a perfect example of that dry British wit. The title and subtitle set it up perfectly:

Review: A no-holds-barred weepathon

At times during this half hour of mawkish misery you longed for the wit and wisdom of a debate featuring Sarah Palin.

I didn’t have the stomach to watch what HotAir brilliantly termed the “Transmission from Mt. Olympus.” So I am grateful for Chris Ayers’ insightful review of the “weepathon.” Here’s how America appears to him:

America’s supplies of tissues must have been exhausted during Barack Obama’s 30-minute election broadcast late on Wednesday night. It had been billed as a “closing argument” by the Democrat’s seemingly unstoppable campaign. In reality, it was an all-out, no-holds-barred weepathon with a feel-bad factor pitched somewhere between the third act of Schindler’s List and the slaughter scenes in Watership Down. I emerged from my TV room sodden-eyed and legs trembling, wishing that Iran would just drop the bomb and get it all over with.

It began, as these things so often do, with a flugelhorn. Then pictures of wind-rippled cornfields. Then footage of children and old people smiling — the tape slowed down a little, to make their happiness appear somehow tragic.

I’m not even sure what a flugelhorn sounds like, but I can certainly imagine how Amabo Productions made use of it (you know, Harpo=Oprah backwards, so why not?):

When Obama, made his entrance he was wearing a sombre black suit (pictured right) and standing in what appeared to be a log cabin. You could practically smell the coffee roasting. This was Obamaland, where everything is safe and warm, where Big Brobama loves you and keeps the evil profit-doers at bay. You, too, could go to Obamaland, went the subtext, just so long as you voted for the man with the “D” next to his name. But in case Americans didn’t realise what was at stake, Obama set out to demonstrate what a God-forsaken, economically devastated shell of a nation they now live in.

So we cut to a harried mother named Rebecca, from North Kansas City, Missouri, who complained that her husband Brian, who works at a tyre plant, has to stand up all day, even though he has a dicky knee. We were treated to a glimpse of Brian slumped on his sofa, looking fed up. He had planned to have surgery in June, said Rebecca, but because of the rising cost of living he couldn’t afford it. We then saw Rebecca rationing the food in her fridge, balancing her cheque book, and driving her humungous SUV in the moonlight.

Rebecca and Brian are clearly Obama’s shout-out to the bitter gun-totters, I suppose. And then there’s this little nugget, as if Obama actually cares one iota about a single working mother with a sick child:

From this purgatory we emerged again into the comforting fuzzy goodness of Obamaland. “We measure the strength of our country not by the number of billionaires we have,” he boomed, “but by whether a waitress who lives on tips can take the day off to look after a sick kid without being laid off.”

Coming up is the biggest insult to the working class. I’ll let Chris Ayers paint the picture:

Then we were back in the wasteland of He Who Must Not Be Named — the dark wizard Bush (whose dead half-brother, McCain, has been exhumed to carry on his dastardly work). This time we were in Sardinia, Ohio, with an elderly African-American woman named Juanita who needs 12 different medications each day for rheumatoid arthritis. Her husband Larry lost his health insurance when he retired, so he took out a loan to pay for the pills, and now, at the age of 72, he has been forced to work as a salesman at Wal-Mart. We saw him putting on his name-pin with an expression of sadness and contempt.

Larry has to work at Wal-Mart! Yuck, that is so uncool! Okay, he’s 72 and maybe wants to stop working, but come on, most people I know hope they’ll be able to work at 72 because we sure as hades won’t be able to afford to retire. But Wal-Mart! Do they even sell arugula?

Moving along to my favorite paragraph:

Then Obama brought up his dead mother. It was enough to make you pine for the wit and intelligence of a Sarah Palin debate. I had hoped for goosebumps and that swollen feeling you get in your chest when you know that something good might happen. But instead I just felt downbeat; not only because of America’s obvious problems but also because of Obama’s willingness to exploit them so mawkishly.

Exploitation is the name of the game for Obama. This Brit sees it pretty clearly.