So, yeah, it was paid for with a big chunk of that ubiquitous, democracy-eroding Super PAC cash that’s sloshing around, but this pro-Obama ad starring Samuel Jackson at least provides a strong exception to our rule: it’s not boring as hell. It’s actually pretty amusing.Slate’s Josh Vorhees explains the video’s origins:This is the new online video from the Jewish Council for Education & Research, a liberal super PAC that has had some success in the viral political ad field before. (Most notably with a video that had Sarah Silverman offering to “scissor” billionaire Sheldon Adelson.)
This one stars Samuel L. Jackson reading a roughly four-minute-long children’s story to Obama supporters—complete with profanity, of course.
The general message is pretty clear from the ad’s title: “Wake the fuck up.” As that would suggest, the video isn’t meant to win over undecided voters as much as energize those existing Obama supporters who may have been considering sitting this one out.This also exemplifies that paradigm of modern campaigning where Obama has a clear edge — in exploiting social networks and titillating the web-obsessed yuppies of the world. This thing will go viral, obviously, and it’s hard to imagine any corollary emerging from the pro-Romney camp. If only Clint Eastwood would’ve just done a ‘Make My Day’ YouTube vid instead of wasting his big political moment pontificating to an empty chair, then maybe … but alas. The web’s trendy echo chamber belongs solely to Obama.