To those of you still working on things and such: God help you. (Unless you’re Christopher Hitchens.) To those of you living under a rock in the shape of Olin Library these past few days: GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry has a new campaign video! It’s called “Strong,” and YouTube comments are disabled for a reason: it’s mighty controversial. In the ad, Perry decries fights back against the liberal plot to ban Christmas, decrying “liberal attacks on our religious heritage” and declaring, “There’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.” He begins by assuring that he’s not ashamed to be a Christian, and then walks up a weirdly sloped hill.
It began as a plea for the evangelical vote. It has ended up as one of the best memes of 2011, inspiring a Twitter hashtag (#XmasWarDiaries), a brilliant Tumblr, and about a bazillion YouTube parodies. The Tumblr is called “Rick Perry’s Unpopular Opinions,” and it explores just that: a continuing series of “Strong”-styled .gif files in which Perry declares Bob Ross is a terrible painter, Bill Nye is not very smart, Howie is the best Backstreet Boy, and Alan Rickman was a terrible Snape. I can go on, but I won’t: here’s the link.
Meanwhile, the campaign video has resulted in a steady and occasionally hilarious series of homemade YouTube parodies. (What is 2011 without a steady and occasionally hilarious series of homemade YouTube parodies?) Some are better than others. Scroll on.
I wonder if Youtube would remove the video if someone reported it for being hateful towards gay people…
The best part about the original video is that the music in the background is by Aaron Copland, an iconic American composer who was gay… and Jewish. My friend from high school pointed that out to Time Magazine.