I look forward to weeks of forced laughter from reporters pretending this is hilarious.
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And here I thought I was the only one that thought Jib Jab was lame as hell. Way to make the most obvious jokes possible and be sure to spend equal time making fun of both sides, guys. You know… because equally pandering to everyone is a sure sign of hilarity, I guess??
I’ll admit that I LOLed at Obama in the forest with all the animals, but that’s because I fucking *love* rainbows and unicorns. (Not even joking.) That was a nice visual, as was McCain going from POW to riding the tank with all the planes and stuff behind him. Oh and the Clinton 2012 posters which, omg, are totally offensive and terrible! but they do look great.
God, if only they had better writers…
Ok, I will say that the instructions on how to put yourself in the video at the end was way more funny than the video itself. I loved the “Do it! Do it NAOUGHW!!!!” and I will never get over the fact that California elected that guy as governor. He’s Kindergarten Cop!
yeah, like the Capitol Steps are funny
like a White Press Corps Banquet without Colbert is funny
like endless war is funny
I never understood why people get so gaga over JibJab. In particular, Salon, which should know better, ran a breathless analysis of how the 2004 Bush vs. Kerry one was one of the most significant pieces of political satire in contemporary history, with unique insights into the dichotomy of blah blah blah. To me, it’s a mildly amusing Internet cartoon, with crappy clip-art animation and lyrics that are about at the level of a Mad Magazine parody.
News flash: middlebrow journalists find middlebrow humor combined with navel gazing to be the most hilarious thing EVER!
Unfortunately, when it comes to people who enjoy middlebrow banal comedy, there are more of them than there are of us.
To me, it’s a mildly amusing Internet cartoon, with crappy clip-art animation and lyrics that are about at the level of a Mad Magazine parody.
I actually thought you can see how computer graphics evolved in the last 4 years - the image quality has significantly improved. Some of the compositions were eye-popping.
Some of it was funny, some of it played to crappy frames. If John McCain is liberally prone, I’m fucking Ron Jeremy. Sen. Clinton’s portrayal is predictably misogynistic. Obama got short shrift. The last stanza was great tho.
My dad always said if you can recognize something as propaganda it’s only 3rd-rate propaganda.
Funny, I thought the 2004 JibJab hit was more effective than the Swiftboat ads, dismissing Kerry’s purple hearts with the tone-perfect “...and in fact I won it thrice.” They’ve always been pretty brilliant projecting Blue negatives and Red positives. Take the funny voices out of this one and look at the scrips and you’ve got… pretty much straight-up talking points for Republicans, straight-up talking points of Clinton and her supporters (including “you can’t trust ‘librul doods’ in general”) and… McCain and Clinton talking points about Obama.
So anyway, yeah, while Blue partisans have a cheery (ageist) laugh about how old McCain is they’ll be absorbing that Obama is a “change about changing change” empty suit.
The social-networking business about adding your face to the image of politicians screwing over a *non-abstract* individual voter, and sending that concrete image to friends is pretty brilliant too.
It’s propaganda, yeah, but it’s a little better than 3rd-rate.
figleaf
Wow, Monica Lewinsky jokes, how up-to-date and groundbreaking.
I hear the Democrats are talking about some new program called the Great Society—should be some humor to mine from that….
i am glad i am not alone in feeling that jib jab is underwhelming, and i am perplexed at how they get so much air time. this one particularly is lame. there’s funnier stuff on don davis’s red state blue state blog.
I look forward to weeks of forced laughter from reporters pretending this is hilarious.
I look forward to a big fat lawsuit from Bob Dylan for appropriating his song, but I guess they’re not charging money, so that won’t happen.
Just because they’re not charging money doesn’t mean it’s not commercial. They do these things to drum up reputation and they do ads for people (a local politician here in Chicago paid them to do a TV ad for him).
From a technical standpoint it was very nicely done, clean, smooth and crisp. I thought some of the scenes were particularly well-done (when the entire army pops up behind McCain and Obama’s magical unicorn ride, for example) and it’s simple and catchy.
Content-wise, it’s a mixed bag. It slams everyone in exactly the way you’d expect - everyone is portrayed in exactly the way their opponents argued most vigorously. Hillary is shown as a vindictive evil witch who is plotting to sabotage Obama, McCain is shown as a warmonger uberpatriot who appeals only to NATIONAL PRIDE!!!11!!ONE!!, and Obama’s The Littlest Elf.
The Bill Clinton stuff is pretty long in the tooth, but nobody ever said JibJab was original.
Over on Eschaton people were arguing that the film showed a strong pro-McCain bias. Can someone explain that to me? I found the overall message to be ‘You’re being screwed regardless,’ and while I feel that Obama will screw us far less than McCain, I can’t entirely disagree.
All I can think of is a line from a Roger Ebert movie review: “What a vast enterprise has been marshaled in service of such a minute idea.”
Saw parts of it on CNN this morning; the bobblehead didn’t even pretend to laugh. Instead, she talked throughout the last 15 seconds of the partial clip they broadcasted, reading off the teleprompter. Apparently no scripted jokes or laughter today.