Whatever the outcome of today's US presidential elections–and I personally hope Barack Obama gets a second term–the media activism in the months leading up to it was remarkable. Despite our tradition of political picong on the hustings, we tend to be vexed and earnest in our own political activism in T&T. In contrast, some of my favourite media moments in the US campaign over the past months have combined humour with trenchant messages.
Here are some of what I consider the best. If you aren't familiar with them and plan to look them up on the Internet, be warned: some of them aren't PG:
Clint Eastwood's odd conversation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention. The Hollywood icon more or less stole the show with his monologue to an imaginary Obama represented by the chair. "I've got Mr Obama sitting here and I just want to ask him a couple of questions," he said at the start of the speech.
To the Republican audience it was hilarious; it left Democrats nonplussed. Less entertaining were the lynched empty chairs in Texas, Virginia and Minnesota that followed the speech. Lynching black people is never funny, even if it is just an empty chair hanging from the tree.
The Big Bird Internet memes criticising Obama's opponent Mitt Romney's statement during the presidential debates. Mitt Romney seems to have Obama in a tied race as of yesterday morning, but to the liberal Internet he was a laughing stock from the start.
He didn't help his cause by saying in the first presidential debate that he liked Big Bird, a popular character on the long-running children's TV show Sesame Street, but were he president he would cut funding to the Public Broadcasting Service that airs Sesame Street.
Dozens of internet posters and videos followed pillorying Romney for his threat to Big Bird. A meme of Big Bird in a crowd of Occupy Wall Street protesters with the banner "Occupy Sesame Street" was my favourite. (Similarly, the "binders full of women" jokes. Romney, in his second debate with Obama, was so eager to prove he's pro-women that he said his aides got him "binders full of women" to fill positions on his staff when he was Massachusetts governor.
The best meme, I found, was the one with an excited Bill Clinton pictured walking on stage next to an ashamed-looking Obama, with the banner, "Did somebody say binders full of women?") Wake the f--- Up. Last year Samuel Jackson voiced an audio version of a hit book called Go the f--- to Sleep.
The book, by Adam Mansbach, was a parody of a children's book designed for weary parents who are wise to the tricks of their bedtime-dodging children. Jackson in turn parodied the parody in a video showing him waking up a sleeping family with dire warnings of what would happen to Americans under a Romney presidency.
Jewish-American comedienne Sarah Silverman's Let My People Vote video. The comic's infamous potty mouth was put to ample use in a video decrying recent voter fraud laws passed in various US states, laws which she (and other critics) said are designed to prevent the elderly, students, armed forces' veterans and black people from voting for Obama.
Latina actress Rosie Perez's Actually.org video. As she mocks Romney's bizarre application of fake tan in an interview geared to woo Latino votes, and his out-of-timing joke at a private fundraiser earlier this year (he said, "Had I been born of Mexican parents I'd have a better shot at winning this..."), Perez points out how far Romney is from understanding the true battles women and Hispanics face in the US.
"Think of all our Hispanic American presidents, from Jorge Washington, to Jorge Bush (uno y dos!), and who could forget Presidente Jimmy Smits? [....] If you were a gay Latina this election would be in the bag for you! Unfortunately for you, Mitt, you were cursed with the hard knock life of growing up as a the son of a wealthy governor and auto executive."
The Wrong Direction parody of the One Direction pop hit What Makes you Beautiful. A group of svelte gay men dance by a swimming pool singing, "Everyone else on TV can see it/ Everyone else but Fox News/ Romney you lie to voters like nobody else/ Your SuperPAC giant size gets Dems overwhelmed/ But when you smile at your wealth it ain't hard to tell/ You won't show/ What you're hiding down below."