The Chutry Experiment

Via the Washington Post, the folks at Barely Political are back with another political crush video, this time pitting Obama Girl against her Republican rival, Giuliani Girl, featuring the two performers in a singing and dancing competition on the streets of Brooklyn that suggests a spiced up version of West Side Story, with a little politics thrown in.

The Post also reports that the creators of the Barely Political vids had one major goal in mind, to go viral on YouTube and beyond, which they have quite clearly succeeded in doing. But The Post also brings up a secondary point, which reflects on something I wrote earlier today in my discussion of the supposed “divide” between entertainment and news cultures. As this article implies, the humor of these videos depends in part on having some knowledge about the two candidates, and while joking about Guiliani’s three divorces isn’t exactly the height of political discourse, the lyrics do address the candidates’ positions on the war (“Giuliani’s hungry for this war”) and Giuliani’s attempts to depict himself as an heir to Ronald Reagan (“I knew Reagan and you’re no Reagan”). In this sense, I do think these videos help to illustrate the artificiality of that separation.

Update: The folks at Barely Political also have a video response to some of the criticisms they’ve received, including Joy Behar’s comment on The View that described Obama Girl as a “hooker.”

Update 2: Apparently, this guy has a crush on “Fred Thompson’s politics.” This video seems a bit more sincere than all the others I’ve mentioned (dissing the IRS, accusing the Dems of piling up pork), which makes the video a little less effective in my opinion.