Move Over Tone And Carmela Soprano, Hillary and Bubba Clinton Are Here
IN a brilliant parody of the Sopranos finale that America has been debating for over a week, a new campaign video from Hillary Clinton places the Presidential hopeful and her husband in a nondescript diner discussing the outcome of her campaign song contest.
The parody contains many elements of the final contentious episode. The Clinton’s daughter Chelsea, like Meadow Soprano, is having difficulty parallel parking her car. The Journey song “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” is playing on the juke box. And customers at nearby tables are faithfully mimicked.
The Clinton team even roped in actor Vincent Curatola (New York boss “Johnny Sack” Sacramoni) to play a menacing customer sitting at the bar who glares at the Clintons as walks away.
Curatola told the Post he didn’t get paid for the part, but he was happy to help Hillary’s campaign: “I like a lot about her. Guts, first of all. A lot of guts, a lot of staying power.”
Though Bill is dressed like Tony in a button-down blue shirt, it’s Hillary who riffs off the boss’s lines, as well as a line of AJ’s.
Clinton’s song contest is likely to go down in web campaigning history as a textbook play.
Not only did the web-based contest log over one million visitors (and 200,000 votes) in a month. The team managed to pull off a stunt that even the Clinton-bashing New York Post lauded as an “uproarious Web spoof”.
According to the New York Daily News News, the contest and video were meant to show the lighter side of a candidate that many voters find “calculating and aloof”.
But Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, told the News he wasn’t sure many Americans would find the video funny.
“One of Hillary Clinton’s problems is that millions of people think of the Clintons in the White House as the Sopranos,” he said.
The purpose of the video was to unveil the new Clinton campaign song. At the end of the video, Clinton drops a quarter in a juke box, the screen fades to black and the winning tune is revealed as Celine Dion’s “You and I (Were Meant to Fly)“.
Instead of everyone ripping into the merits of a lame song with the chorus:
You and I were meant to flyHigher than the cloudsWe’ll sail across the skySo come with meAnd you will feelThat we’re soaringThat we’re floating up so high’cause you and I were meant to fly
The Clintons, for today at least, seem to have scored a couple of New York media points.
Posted: 20th, June 2007 | In: Reviews Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
