OBAMA VIDEO: IMPRESSIVE, DEPRESSING & SCARY

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AN EXTRAORDINARY VIDEO may be the most effective political campaign ad
of the season - as well as the most depressing and scary. As the Nation
reports:

"In a final salvo for Super Tuesday, the Obama Campaign blasted an email
from Ms. Obama urging supporters to share the new music video "Yes We
Can." The video was a smash hit across the web since launching on
Friday, bringing direct footage of Obama's stump speech to millions of
people. It already netted over 1.8 million views on YouTube, and
potentially hundreds of thousands more from another hub, DipDive.com,
which drew over 1,000 links from U.S. websites since last week. The
Obama Campaign's new viral push should bolster those numbers."

As a piece of campaign advertising - apparently exempt from the legal
category of such promotions - there is little one can find to fault it.
But it also symbolizes a grossly emotional, symbolic, cynical and
vacuous politics that Obama has ridden to the top this campaign, as
others have tried and failed. The indifference to, and contempt for,
real issues - including ones that may determine the fate of our
democracy, economy and environment - has never been matched, try as hard
as earlier candidates have. This campaign has been nothing but one
extraordinary work of bad fiction. It is as though Marvel or Action
Comics had staged a secret coup against the Republic, seizing control of
the minds of candidates, media and voters, leaving us in the end nothing
to of which to be certain, in the case of Obama, other than a three word
slogan, "Yes We Can" and thinking that is quite enough.

But there is also something quite scary about the video. As I watched
Obama's words being mimicked by attractive and ethnically diverse
supporters, I got the eerie feeling that I was watching a Nazi
propaganda film where the words in a different time and a different
place would have been not "Yes, we can" but "You are Germany" or "Heil
Hitler" and where attractive young people -  the jungen - knew as little
as little about the future policies of the man they cheered as do
Obama's supporters today.

It wasn't Obama's fault; it was the video maker who had taken clips of
the candidate and blended them with others to create this modern version
of a political art form that has its roots in Nazi propaganda. Nobody
wants to admit it these days, but every campaign ad you see owes a debt
to Joseph Goebbels.

Here were some of Goebbels' principles as outlined by Leonard Doob in
the book "Public Opinion and Propaganda":

- To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and
must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium.

-  Credibility alone must determine whether propaganda output should be
true or false.

- A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of
diminishing effectiveness

- [Slogans] must evoke desired responses which the audience previously
possesses

- They must be capable of being easily learned

- They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate
situations.

Obama has entered dangerous territory in a campaign that has relied
excessively on effective but ultimately indefinable abstractions such as
"hope" while giving only nerdish and hyper technical explanations of
what policies he might actually conduct.

He is saved by his past behavior which provides a partial assumption of
what he might do in the future, even if he doesn't want to tell us in
more than evasive terms. He is also saved by his atrocious competition.

But we, as citizens, should not be quiet servants of the pitiful choices
set before us. Our survival depends in no small part on understanding
when we are being conned, misused and abused.

Buried in this video's subtext is the assumption that many voters are
able to handle at one time no more than one thought comprising of no
more than three words. This either suggests an extremely low potential
for whatever "we can," not to mention a deep cynicism about American
citizens.

It is this shallowness of perceived potential combined with depth of
cynicism that helps to endanger our land. It is far from Obama's fault
alone. But before you say that this is all too much about too little,
watch the video again, only this time put a young, attractive, extreme
rightwing general in Obama's place and you will, I think, see the
problem a little better.

OBAMA VIDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fZHou18Cdk&eurl=http://my.barackobama.com/page/invite/yeswecanvideo


SOME MORE SIMPLE SLOGANS FOR OBAMA

Choose Freedom. . . . Toshiba

Intelligence everywhere. . . Motorola

He keeps going and going and going.. . . Energizer Batteries

Let's Make Things Better. . . Philips

Make yourself heard. . . Ericsson

Trusted Everywhere. . . Duracell Batteries, 2000

Thousands of possibilities. . . Best Buy

We bring good things to life.. . . GE

Imagination at Work.. . . GE

For a better world for you. . . T-Mobile

Think different. . . Apple Computer

Connecting people. . . NOKIA

A Passion to Perform. . . Deutsche Bank

Where Vision Gets Built. . . Lehman Brothers

Dare To Dream. . . Bank Of Rajasthan - India

Touching Lives, Improving Life. . . Procter & Gamble

Impossible is nothing.. . . Adidas

The right one. . . Martini
 
Good. Better. . .  Paulaner

It's all about you. . . Nescafé

The real thing. . . Coca Cola 1971

Just for the taste of it... Diet Coke

Break out of the ordinary. . . Nestle's Butterfinger

Moving you forward.. . . Toyota

The Power Of Dreams. . . Honda, 2001

A Better Way forward. . . Michelin

We Never Forget Who We're Working For. . . Lockheed Martin

Forward as one. . . British Territorial Army

With you, for you always - Delhi Police

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