Tagged: funny videos

Why do I hate Michelle Malkin’s dancing so much?

After Michelle Obama’s homage to suburban Mom dances on Jimmy Fallon on Friday night, Michelle Malkin responded with this on Sunday.  You don’t have to watch it, because for the most part it’s painful:

Malkin’s response time is great perfect – her video was up before the original had a chance at Monday morning virality (which was a lock because it was actually kind of funny).  That’s good, but it’s where the good stops; Malkin’s video is kind of lame.

[Note: It's still better than my video, which is linked here.  Oh, that's right, I didn't make a video.  Duly noted.  Back to the cheap shots...]

The problem largely stems from the word “liberal” in Malkin’s title.  While factually accurate, it raises the immediate flag that this is speaking only to a political audience, the kind that will descend on the National Harbor for CPAC in just a few weeks.  There’s nothing wrong with rallying the troops, but Malkin can probably do better.

“Better” might be a mock video response that substitutes the First Lady for the President himself, bringing Michelle Obama’s decidedly non-political and self-deprecating bit into contrast with her hyper-political, self-aggrandizing husband.  It would definitely drop the political labels, focusing more on DC versus regular voters, rather than conservatives versus liberals.  And it would have to emphasize humor more than scoring week debate points, because in videos like this funny is most important.

Malkin tallied over 65,000 views at press time.  That’s impressive, but if her audience wasn’t so narrow, she might have tripled that.  There’s nothing wrong with rallying the troops, but real advancement of center-right ideas isn’t going to come from overtly political videos that preach to the choir.

[Still better than my video.]

The new tone of politics and the Medicare debate

Paul Ryan released another excellent video today, driving home some of the most important points from his original call for limiting the scope of government:

Wow, that’s powerful stuff.  But it isn’t enough to hear one side, so surely the opponents of entitlement reform have a reasonable, thoughtful, well-cited answer:

Unfortunately, sophomoric doesn’t necessarily equal ineffective.

Why can’t Chuck start a business?

The Institute for Justice hit one out of the park with this video, which is one of the few attempts at online humor that is both effective at delivering a message and really funny.  One of DC’s most philosophically consistent defenders of individual liberties, IJ just released a series of studies on the effects local governments can have on the business climate, even as elected officials try to “fix this unemployment problem.”

Crist probably didn’t approve THIS message

From the Florida Senate race comes this re-mix of a Charlie Crist ad:

This video is well done, drives home a message simply and effectively, and may very well have been done on an activist’s home computer.  Aside from demonstrating that the campaign messages are sometimes best articulated by volunteers and voters, it shows the idiocy of campaign finance laws.

This isn’t necessarily a rogue activist popping off, but that is certainly a possibility.  Is that an in-kind donation to the Rubio campaign?  To Meek?  To both?  And how much is are the few hours of video editing worth?

The argument against campaign finance laws has always been that they fail to recognize the individual right of free speech.  When the only way to broadcast a message to a wide audience was through expensive broadcast media buys, it was harder to put the speech of a wealthy campaign supporter in the same category as Joe Q. Average sharing an opinion with friends and neighbors.  Today’s environment is different.  The person behind the video above understands that it doesn’t take a big dollar donation to get your point across anymore.