The contest may be over, but here are two more worthy entries in Power Line’s contest for the best entry that uses pop culture in any format to convey the seriousness of our national debt problem.
The first is a hip-hop video featuring babies with a message for the “adults” who run the country. I’m not a big fan of rap or hip-hop, but this made me laugh:
Speakin’ truth to power, yo!
The next is more serious, and I think it would make a very effective 1-minute commercial as it stands, or maybe trimmed to a 30-second spot. Regardless, I’d be surprised if some conservative group such as Club for Growth or Americans for Prosperity haven’t contacted the maker already to acquire the rights to “Doorbell.”
Here’s the winner of the Power Line contest for art in any medium that would best educate the public about our national debt problem. A modern-day Aesop’s Fable using squirrels and nuts to make it’s point, the video is by Justin Folk, who earns a cool $100,000 for his efforts:
I have to admit, this wasn’t my favorite (this one is), though I think it’s a worthy choice. It’s a bit long and lacks something of the laugh-out-loud humor that I think is so important when giving people a message that normally will scare them. (When you scare them, they may stop listening. Make them laugh, though… ) Folk, interestingly enough, creates the backgrounds for Andrew Klavan‘s marvelous videos, which I’ve often posted here. I think this would have been improved by having Andrew collaborate on the script.
But those are quibbles; I think it’s good. But, more importantly, I think this contest was a great idea, one that should be repeated. I wrote before that conservatives and libertarians need to engage in pop culture and the arts to get their views back into the marketplace of ideas where people are likely to see them and be influenced. For too long, that ground has been ceded to the liberals and the Left. (But I repeat myself), and efforts like this from Power Line or in general from sites such as Big Hollywood are invaluable.
I’m looking forward to next year’s contest.
PS: You can see all the best contest entries here.
Here’s another finalist in the Power Line contest. This one’s much more somber than the first two, but very effective:
Well done.
Although I’m trying to think of, as the video asserts, great nations brought to ruin by debt. The British Empire after the World Wars? But they had also suffered generational casualties. Europe overall, with the rise of social democracy?
Another amusing video from the Power Line contest to see who could come up with the best way to explain our national debt problem via pop culture. This wasn’t a winner, but I liked it. Kind of a catchy tune.
The Pelosi-Frank cameo might give me nightmares, though…
For most of the past summer, the Power Line blog has been running a contest offering $100,000 to the person or group who could, in any medium, best illustrate our national debt problem. The judges have made their decisions, and the winners are being gradually announced. My favorite so far is number eight, called “Weight.” I like to think of it as “The Debt Star,” for reasons you’ll see:
It carries a serious message and yet made me laugh. Well done!
One of the problems conservatism has had in modern America in getting its message across has been the surrender of popular culture and art to the Left. Countering this is one reason Andrew Breitbart founded Big Hollywood. The Power Line contest is another strategy in that same battle. (1) But it will only work if you spread the word (rather than the wealth). As John Hinderaker writes:
My request to you is: steal these videos! Email them to your friends; post them on Facebook; tweet them; if you have a web site, put them up. The idea of the Power Line Prize contest was to stimulate the creation of a lot of new ways to educate people about the debt crisis, not just a few. So the more people who see these videos, hear the songs, and view the other media, the better.
I’m all for odd and amusing public art, but not for $600,000 of federal taxpayer money:
Decried as wasteful spending that will be seen by just a couple thousand of daily workers who arrive on bus shuttles, foes have tried to delay the decision, expected tomorrow, April 1. But in an E-mail, an Army Corps of Engineers official said that the decision can’t be held up because it would impact completion of the huge project.
The City of Alexandria just announced that there are four works of art being considered and that a final decision needs to be made fast. The artwork was put on display for public comment from March 24 to today. The Alexandria News first reported the hasty announcement to decide a winner.
The schedule surprised some who thought that the costly artwork project was on the “back burner,” according to critic Donald Buch, a member of the mayor’s advisory committee overseeing the Mark Center project. “What’s the rush?” he asked.
What’s the rush?? Well, I tell you, mister: What red-blooded federal worker wouldn’t want to see a giant statue of a fairy riding a toad on their morning commute — with sound effects!
Here’s an interesting short documentary from Reason.TV on an exhibit of Nazi propaganda art and literature at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Reason’s Michael Moynihan interviews curator Steve Luckert not only about why Nazi propaganda was so effective, but also the relevance the study of it has for us today:
They’re refusing to extradite Roman Polanski to the US. Why? Because they can’t be sure there isn’t a flaw in the extradition request, even though they can’t find one:
The 76-year-old French-Polish film director Roman Polanski will not be extradited to the USA. The freedom-restricting measures against him have been revoked. This announcement was made by Mrs Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, head of the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP), in Berne on Monday. The reason for the decision lies in the fact that it was not possible to exclude with the necessary certainty a fault in the US extradition request, although the issue was thoroughly examined. Moreover, also the principles of State action deriving from international public order were taken into account.
Oh, for Pete’s sake! The Swiss are basing their denial on two technicalities and the remote possibility that there might be a flaw in the request – which had been “thoroughly examined.” Don’t forget what Polanksi did: he stands convicted of drugging and anally raping a 13-year old girl. And yet Madame Widmer-Schlumpf is letting him go on the basis of a possibly uncrossed T?
Ed has it right: this is just cover. The real reason they’ve committed this judicial atrocity is to please the entertainment industry and the EU Left, who apparently think drugging and sodomizing a child can be excused for the sake of art.
Congratulations, Switzerland! With this one move, your government has placed your nation on a level with amoral banana-republics the world over.
Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for the Northwest bombing in a Monday statement that vowed more attacks on Americans.
American officials agreed to send the two terrorists from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Nope, instead we release them to Saudi Arabia, the country from which 15 of the 19 9-11 hijackers came from and the home of the bin Laden family, where they can be deprogrammed by Islamic scholars (who practice the same Salafist brand of Islam as bin Laden) and healed by drawing unicorns and making ceramic ashtrays. What could go wrong?
This is a rare case when “I blame George W. Bush” actually has some meaning, since it was under President Bush that this misbegotten idea was hatched. And here’s a chance for President Obama to genuinely fix something by ending this stupid “release terrorists back to terrorist-supporting countries” program and keeping them locked up in Guantanamo, world opinion be damned.
RELATED: The Weekly Standard says the ABC report was a bit off. Legal Insurrection provides some legal context for the release program and points out that Justice Scalia was prophetic in his dissent to the Boumediene case. Fausta is shocked that art therapy doesn’t cure jihadism.
Posted by Phineas Fahrquar 
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