Monday, October 18, 2010

The 5-minute campaign: A proposal

Is everyone else as sick of political ads and campaigning in general as I am? I've got fucking Rafael Mandelman knocking on my door at 10 a.m. on a Sunday which is still Early Time at my house and leaving me mash notes that say "SORRY I MISSED YOU!! LOVE U LOTS!!! XXOO RAFFI" or something like that and every 30 seconds on TV I have to see an ad about Texas oil companies funding Prop Something and Carly Fiorina shipping jobs overseas and GOD SO MANY MEG WHITMAN ADS MAKE IT STOP.

Last Saturday we gave up and put a sign at the bottom of our stairs that said "No Canvassers Please" and you know what? It was SO NICE not having anyone knock on our door and our dog FREAK OUT and lose his shit for one day.

I have an idea for political ads, and here it is. All politicians running for office get ONE, 5-minute ad, and THAT'S IT. You can do whatever you want with your 5 minutes, but you better make it count, because that's all you get. You can gaze meaningfully at the Bright Future or you can spend the whole time talking about what a shitpile your opponent is, but at the end of 5 minutes, YOU ARE FUCKING DONE.

Wouldn't that be nice? Don't give me any First Amendment crap about how this violates free speech either. The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," but guess what? The freedom of speech and of the press is abridged all over the place every day. Want proof? Try putting a show called "Fucking Orgies" on ABC during primetime and see what happens. The FCC fined Fox $25,000 for a horse ejaculation joke, so you can guess what would happen to our new show "Fucking Orgies."

ANYWAY. I'll do the Mad Men recap later. I'm in the middle of something here.

4 comments:

Tamagosan said...

While I'll keep my political affiliations aside (VOTE PROZAN DISTRICT 8) because I've yet to fill out my absentee ballot, I will point out another example of what my family and friends call Here She Talks About How Everything Was Better In France And Why Don't You Just Move Back There And Stop Bitching About America.

SO IN FRANCE (greenest grass around it's just true so there), the political campaign season is as lacking in sex appeal as humanly possible. You are not to put campaign signs in your window (LIKE MY PROZAN ONE). There are no door-to-door flyers/visitors/cute notes. AND the best part is, since nearly all campaigns are publicly financed, the ads are far, far less intrusive. And no scary sheep!

There is a period before the evening news where each candidate gets X amount of time to talk. So you can go make yourself a jambon-beurre and then it's over. There is an emphasis of equal face time on TV for all candidates in all (not just two!) parties, and although some media outlets get around this and rich corrupt assholes mostly end up winning anyway, there is at least an attempt and, like I said, no sheep.

Unknown said...

not sure what tamagosan was yappin' about, but remember this fuckin' guy?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rZdAB4V_j8
i say "fuckin' guy" with more genuine respect than all the brooklyn wops put together.

Unknown said...

yeah, mike gravel. he was a senator for alaska back in the day, then ran for president in the 2008 election. i pretty much write him in on every ballot i can get my hands on. i would take gravel over obama any day of the week just based on that ad. he was obviously onto big things.

Greg said...

this year has had some of the worst ads ever made on TV and the mail is literal shit. the thing I can't stand the most are these morons who dump a pile of doorhangers or literature (litter-ature more like it) at our apartment complex and somehow think this shit isn't going to end up in the recycle bin at our front door.

The worst offender is John Rizzo, alleged head of the Sierra Club. Dude had his people dump a ton of dead tree doorhangers all over our courtyard, and then when the rain hit, they became a mess. Same goes for the No on B people.

Needless to say , I've left a LOT of my ballot blank...