Thursday 10 April 2008

Iraq, Petraeus, the surge: Jon Stewart says it all

Some people claim that we should worry about more and more American young people using The Daily Show as their prime source of political news. I don't. This is one of the most brilliant pieces of political satire I have ever seen.

Thursday 3 April 2008

Mike Gravel is not the next POTUS, but he's failing in an interesting way

I have blogged before about the Democratic presidential candidate Mike Gravel, who just like the Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul relied heavlily on internet campaigning - and failed. However, he managed to produce some of the most interesting forms of political communication that I have ever seen, for example in the short film "The Rock".

A few days ago, Gravel announced that he was now seeking the Libertarian Party nomination for president. He still has no chance of actually being elected, but he is still collaborating with innovative artists, reinventing political communication.

Like in this video. "Helter Skelter X aka Electro Skeletor" is a cover of Beatles' Helter Skelter featuring Mike Gravel reciting the lyrics to pictures of the Kennedy assassination, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, presidents Johnson, Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr. as well as footage from the Vietnam and Iraq wars and 9/11, finishing with president Eisenhower's famous warning of the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell adress in 1961.

I'm not sure that I like the somewhat Mansonian touch of it, but it is still fascinating.