June 28th, 2004
Bush In 30 Seconds
Driven by the lack of fresh talent involved in creating political ads, Laura Dawn, David Fenton, Moby, Eli Pariser, Lee Solomon, and Jonathan Soros launched Bush In 30 Seconds.
[Bush in 30 Seconds is] an ad contest that’s intended to bring new talent and new messages into the world of mainstream political advertising. We’re looking for the ad that best explains what this President and his policies are really about — in only 30 seconds.
They received an overwhelming response and the top 150 videos are available online in Quicktime format. The list is an awesome pool of creative talent–the ads are thought provoking, humourous and full of satire/sarcasm that screams out to people to think.
Even as a non-US citizen but very much affected by their actions, watching these clips made me wonder how much damage was done, directly and indirectly to the Americans and the rest of the world for the short-term benefit of a few by a leadership that allowed itself to be puppeteered so easily. If for some reason somebody proves to me that they were not manipulated into molesting our planet and the people who were perhaps not powerful enough to oppose them, I really shudder at their concept of justice, freedom and liberty, and civil and human rights and hope that such utter neglect of principles and blind following of a misguided few in the name of ‘patriotism’ will never happen again.
I always used to wonder how the Germans were brainwashed into following Hitler and the Italians followed Mussolini in World War II and could never quite fathom how there can be such a complete blanket over common sense. Now, having witnessed something similar (I know here that those who support the so-called ’cause’ will scream, whine and stomp their feet in protest and mouth expletives at the comparision) on perhaps a different level, I see too many things common between these to not shudder in amazement of how human psyche can be manipulated so easily and those who remain unaffected and protest suppressed, ridiculed and persecuted.