{"id":13197,"date":"2010-07-27T21:39:30","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T01:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2010\/07\/27\/13197.html"},"modified":"2018-03-13T18:56:02","modified_gmt":"2018-03-13T23:56:02","slug":"rainy-day-congressmen-no-12-35","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2010\/07\/27\/rainy-day-congressmen-no-12-35\/","title":{"rendered":"Rainy Day Congressmen No. 12 & 35"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So, Colin McEnroe's blog pointed me to this YouTube video called Reefer Rob<\/a>. It’s a sort of political attack ad aimed at Rob Merkle, who is running for the other Party’s nomination to run against an incumbent in the US House here in Connecticut (well, in the Fourth District; I am in the First—Go John Larson!). The point of the ad is that Rob Merkle was caught with a joint in his pocket ten years ago (when he was 32), down in Florida where his father was a prosecutor, and wasn’t charged.\n

But the real point is to sing “Because I Got High” with the lyrics changed to talk about Rob Merkle, and show a bunch of dope-smokers.\n

But here’s the thing: it seems to me, and I want to point out that this is just my reaction, it seems to me that this video is not going to work. I don’t mean that it’s going to change anybody’s mind, because of course that’s not what it is supposed to do. And maybe it will make Rob Merkle into Reefer Rob Merkle, a total joke who can’t be taken seriously, which is what it is supposed to do.\n

But—I’m thinking of two groups of people: people who find pot-smoking to be a Bad Thing, and people who would find this video funny enough to share around. Is there a lot of overlap there? I mean, I don’t really know. The people I know, whether they have actually inhaled or not (and I have never smoked a joint, inhaled or not, as it happens) generally think of pot-smoking as anything from Cool to laughable; I don’t think I know anybody well who would be outraged by a thirtysomething guy with a joint. And it seems to me that my friends and the people like them are exactly<\/i> the people who would find the video funny, recognizing the images and the music (although presumably if Your Humble Blogger is familiar with a song that came out after 2000, every fucking person in the whole world is familiar with it, right?) and generally being amused by the idea. Not that I find it hilarious, you understand, just amusing enough to watch through to the end, and then to mention to, well, Gentle Readers through this Tohu Bohu.\n

Now, of course, very few people in this group that I’m talking about, the ones who might find the video amusing, are likely voters in a Republican primary in Connecticut’s Fourth District. That’s because there are very few voters in a Republican primary in Connecticut’s Fourth District. But those people who are going to turn out to vote, and who are going to donate to a Republican candidate, and go to rallies and put up signs and all that—is it just a total stereotype of mine that I have a hard time imagining those people watching this video on YouTube, being amused by it, passing it on?\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Which Your Humble Blogger wonders why Jay and Silent Bob do not make an appearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19147,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13197\/revisions\/19147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}