I’m a little late getting to this, but I must say I’m shocked to see the Republican Party playing the class warfare card on behalf of the 99% and trying to stick it to the 1%:
The Republican National Committee released a new web video Monday lampooning the Obama campaign’s latest fundraising effort, a web ad with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour that came out Friday, the same day as the dismal jobs report.
The RNC’s online video titled “Meanwhile” pokes fun at the Wintour web video, beginning with the line “On the same day the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent. …”
This ad is attacking success! This ad is making the socialist argument that wealthy people are responsible for the troubles of the less fortunate! This is the politics of envy!
I understand why it’s supposed to work — Republicans love to attack the cultural elite so the public won’t attack the economic elite, the people whose wealth dwarfs that of Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker. But I’m not sure this ad works even on that level. Wintour isn’t Rosie O’Donnell or Barbra Streisand or Sean Penn — she’s not someone known, even on the right, for holding forth on politics. Same with Sarah Jessica Parker. And as for the mainstream voters who might see the ad online, I’d say a lot of them are either consumers of the work Wintour and Parker do or are indifferent to it. Most Americans see celebrities as interesting distractions from humdrum lives, people whose work is entertaining and comes at a reasonable price, and offers a chance to daydream. They don’t hate celebrities for being celebrities.
And the weird thing about the ad itself, at least for me, is that it draws my eye to Wintour, so I don’t even read the economic statistics. And then the sound begins to fade and I think it’s some sort of technical glitch or arty effect, or something wrong with my computer. Come on, Republicans! Go for the cliche scary pseudo-Carmina Burana music!
Do you read it differently? I think the ad utterly fails.
And I know I shouldn’t defend it, but if our political system requires pols to rake in bucks by hobnobbing with swells, I’d rather it be these swells.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
