…asked the rabbit. The Atlantic just did a story on this strangely Blazing Saddle-like Herman Cain political ad. After hearing about it over my morning coffee, I pulled it up on my iPhone and watched it incredulously, in pieces re-loading itself. And it’s bi-partisan funny/weird at that! Conor Friedersdorf called it a “Dadaist Meta-Western.” He went on to explain that like the Dadaist Art Movement of the early 20th Century, it “…was a protest, but at the same time it managed to be enjoyable and amusing. It was sarcastic, colorful, quirky and silly.”
I remember when one of the kids was in high school, someone ran for student body president who happened to be first generation Polish and he did his big campaign speech entirely in Polish. It may have been around the same time that Reese Witherspoon perfect teen spoof, “Election,” hit theaters. Naturally, the Polish-speaking candidate won. I was a member of the school board then, and he turned out to be an excellent President!
So what is real? If the point of the Dadaist Movement was to hold a mirror up to the times we are living in, Cain is taking our pulse. That slow-mo smile at the end, the simplicity of his 9-9-9 or 9-0-9 plan, his smoking man ad, that irreverence, I just wasn’t getting it until now. He really wants to get the Republican nomination and go face to face with Obama. Keeping it “Real” may hurt, as the Skin Horse said in the Velveteen Rabbit. It may hurt him like a spaghetti Western. Cain may not have a chance, but his ad campaign should bring home a CLIO.
Thanks for sharing!