Uh, WHAT?!

[ironphoenix]

Who the ____ thought that this could possibly be a good idea?!

(The film clip doesn't play automatically, which is a Good Thing; take the warning about it being disturbing seriously before deciding to play it.)

Comments

[metawidget]

We're talking about it, that's for sure — it reminds me of Monty Python trying too hard. I sort of get the attempted joke after a few minutes of reflection, but that's not how jokes are supposed to work.

The rule for good propaganda (as opposed to PSAs) is to energize the base without regard to the feelings of the non-base. I suspect much of the base is more depressed than energized at this ad.

[iclysdale.livejournal.com]

But the role of good advocacy - which is what 10:10 should be doing - is to reach your non-base potential supporters and make them think - hopefully without actually alienating your base or energizing the base of your political opponents.

In this case, I'd say they missed the mark on all three fronts. That being said, at least they realized that and got an apology and retraction out awfully quickly. In coalition organizations, that's actually a fairly impressive achievement of damage control.

[metawidget]

True — but when something doesn't make sense as advocacy, one of the better bits of advice I got in university is to see if it makes sense as propaganda. Given that it's bad propaganda, too, I'm glad to see they retracted and apologized (although the heads-in-tar-sands types will take a very long time to let it go — in the comments on the article, someone mentioned that it looked like a parody of a parody of hard-line environmentalists, and I think that's about right).

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Very good and pithy analysis!