Leave Barack Alone: “Chris Crocker” Gets Political

Say what you will about the biases and pre-occupations evident in the mainstream media’s coverage of the current presidential election; one way or another, today’s political candidates get the satire they deserve. If Barack Obama is going to seduce voters with shallow imagery and superficial emotional appeals, Obama Girl will rise up as his gently winking mirror. If John McCain is going to attempt to puncture the Obama love bubble by suggesting the Democratic candidate is no different than a number of talentless blondes known less for their accomplishments than for their perceived trashiness, then someone will inevitably rise up to mitigate the situation via the methods previously used to defend a talentless blonde known less for her accomplishments than for her perceived trashiness.

Those someones are Slate’s Andy Bowers, Bill Smee and Christopher Beam who, along with editor Andy Bouve, are responsible for Leave Barack Alone. The clip is an appropriation of the much-mocked (and imitated) Leave Britney Alone, with Chris Crocker’s voice taken out and Beam’s voiced dubbed in.

“What you don’t realize,” complained Crocker in the original, “is that Britney’s making you guys a bunch of money, and all you do is write a bunch of crap about her!” Beam’s update: “What you don’t realize, is that Barack is making America cool again. All you do is run a bunch of crappy ads about him!”

There’s a level of skill to this (sometimes, Beam’s words even seem to be plausibly coming out of Crocker’s mouth) that’s commendable. But mostly the new clip is worth watching up against Crocker’s original to spot how the Slate team’s alterations simultaneously point up the ridiculousness of the McCain ad’s argument, and yet fail to make the case that Obama’s achievements amount to more than coolness, that his hardships extend beyond having to absorb McCain’s weak darts. No wonder the clip has been embraced by Obama-friendly bloggers and the McCain campaign equally (there are references to “John McSame” in its YouTube description, indicating on which side its makers fall).

That said, the fact that Leave Barack Alone exists at all represents some kind of victory for user-generated media. Desperate for content even when there’s no news, the cable news channels are giving increasing attention to media created for the web, thereby creating a feedback loop between videos made by the campaigns to talk to voters, and videos made by (potential) voters to talk about the campaigns. That the obvious reference for a web video production to employ when spoofing an official campaign ad is another web video is a sign that the gap between the two types of media has all but disappeared.