It seems like this was the week of dueling racial memes, with controversy swirling around videos of former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton backer, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama’s church, and lots of commentary by interested bystanders. We’ll get to those, but first some lighter fare.
The Jack Nicholson endorsement of Hillary Clinton seems to be doing pretty well for her, with well over 120,000 views on the campaign’s YouTube channel and tens of thousands elsewhere (even though it’s basically just audio of a radio interview. It inspired this pastiche of movie clips (ending with Nicholson saying he approves this message), which has drawn a stunning 1.4 million views.
But Nicholson’s body of work is so rich, it was bound to also inspire some sharp parodies, including this one, with more than 200,000 views:
The SwiftKids for Truth make a fashion statement about who wears the pants-suits in the White House. They’re cute in pink. Nearly 9,000 views so far.
And, in a somewhat harsher slam on Obama, the little guys go after his adolescent drug use, asking “Is it snowing in here?” I kind of wonder if it’s child abuse to get child actors saying these lines. Just over 6,000 views as of this morning.
The Rev. Wright video has been viewed almost 100,000 times here, plus tens of thousands elsewhere. It just broke into view two days ago, so it may be a bit early to see how much impact it will have–but that’s a pretty fast rise for a new political video.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ferraro’s remarks continue to reverberate. This YouTube of Ferraro telling radio host John Gibson that Obama wouldn’t be where he is today if he weren’t black has been watched nearly 45,000 times.
Over on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment on Hillary Clinton,” which excoriates her for not taking stronger steps to end the racial references from her campaign surrogates, has taken off like a rocket, with 71,000 views already. Tough stuff. I suppose it’s worth mentioning here that while the Clinton team scrubbed all mentions of Eliot Spitzer from their website within an hour of his first public announcement, they’re still showing this endorsement video from Ferraro on their YouTube channel.
But this satire from “Public Service Administration” and Election08 puts the issue completely over the top. They give us a rendition of “Clinton campaign advisers” who keep denying that they’re mentioning Obama’s race while mentioning his race. “Don’t Think of a Black Man” may be a bit cerebral for the videosphere, but it’s my favorite for the week. 74,000 views as of this morning.