Handsomely done, and very Mac Generation. He's making the running. She'd better get a fucking good PR company in, and soon, if he's not going to saunter into the Democratic nomination.

It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. It doesn't even attempt to substantiate its apparent premise. It's utterly mindless. Very Mac generation.

But when has substance played any part in effective political broadcast, particularly in America? Grasping and holding attention, the association of your candidate with a positive vibe and the tarring of your opponent with a negative one, is everything.

I know that, and yet somehow the complete lack of sense still annoys me.

The format's familiar, has it been done somewhere else before?

If you're seriously asking, it's the famous Apple "1984" ad, screened during the 1984 Superbowl to launch the first Apple Mac.

Ahhhhh sorry. Not enough coffee yet. And I was only 5 at the time :$

I have age. :((

in a multimedia module i had this year they showed that original apple ad in the first lecture, and some definitely not nerdy great lad sitting near me mouthed every word perfectly in sync. and with all the right intonations. fantastic stuff.

You just sat there wishing you were him, didn't you?

Not as much as I have :{) >:-(

I find great solace in that thought.

Yes, but look at me. Someday all this horror will be yours.

I can see why you like it, and why it is successful as an ad, but it's not good satire. It would be nice if prospective leaders of the free world had something to say about other candidates other than "they're not me". It's not as if it would be difficult to pick up on Hilary's potential problems and make an ad just as slick, but with some seed of wit in it.

 

And as my appalling racist grandmother, who is still metaphorically alive in the US today, even in the Democratic Party, would say: he's got a touch of the tar brush about him, that man.

But only a touch; which is what gives him a fighting chance at the nomination. He's much more white than black; creepily so.

With regard to the ad, I think it's pitched just right for this early in the campaign: slick and clever, and addressing a very specific and, for the Obama campaign, absolutely bullseye demographic. It just vaguely implies that Clinton is distant, patronising and imperious, picking up on her key presentational flaws.

The specifics will come a lot later. And that's where Obama's campaign managers have to pray that he doesn't have any major skeletons in his cupboard. They don't have to be bigger than Whitewater to knock him off-track: just more salacious or grubby.

You are correct, wiseman. But I'm still holding out for Boris Johnson to put his hat into the ring.

"Cripes! Is this thing on? Oh. Hullo, America. Jolly nice day isn't it. Isn't the world an altogether generally pleasant place?"

<Washington asplode />

I 'd like to see him putting a hat into his ring. Especially something ambitious like a busby. Now that would be entrtainment.

You are a bad man who has spent too much time with Greg, and has forgotten that normal folk can't fit objects like hats or K6 telephone kiosks up their arses.

Both of your points are entirely reasonable.