It’s been a long, at times hilarious, two-year race down the presidenital campaign trail. Taking the long view back, here are some of the most memorable pop-culture moments of the journey. Dana Coffield, Stephen Keating and Tucker Shaw
Wrap yourself in the flag
What started out as an innocent “crush on Obama” propelled Amber Lee Ettinger, a.k.a. Obama Girl, to political luminary status. Don’t ask us how or why.
It’s 3 a.m. and I’m ready to rule
Hillary Rodham Clinton launches an early negative salvo with a February 2008 TV ad that wondered aloud, “Who do you want answering the red phone in the Oval Office at 3 a.m.?” Barack Obama’s campaign fires back with a commercial that answers: Someone who had the clarity of thought to vote against the Iraq war. Satirists strike with one of their own, suggesting the only call Hillary will get at 3 a.m. is from Bill, home after a night of clubbing and locked out of the White House.
What were they thinking?
The New Yorker magazine proves that Manhattan satire works best, well, in Manhattan, with an early-summer cover that portrayed Michelle and Barack Obama as terrorists.
Jump back JibJab
The animators finally showed up July 15 with an equal-opportunity skewering of politics and the candidates. One of the brightest moments of “Time for Some Campaignin’,” a spot-on parody sung to Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A’Changin,” is the Disney-esque sequence featuring Obama astride a galloping unicorn singing “I’ve got one or two things to say about change, the change we must change to the change we hold dear. I really like change, have I made myself clear?”
Playing catch-up
Riffing on the supremely irritating 1999 Budweiser “Wassup” commercials, where four guys call one another and yell “wassup!” into the phone, we fast-forward eight years and one of the guys is sitting in his foreclosed house when he gets called by a guy who is calling from a pay phone in the desert of Iraq, another has a cast on his neck and arm but can’t pay for pain meds. Wassup? Change! The ad opines, ordering viewers to VOTE.
We got a gusher here
Joe Sixpack is kicked to the curb by Joe the Plumber, a Holland, Ohio tradesman who gotcha’d Obama on the campaign trail about the Democrat’s tax policy and then was adopted as the new everyman by McCain and Palin, to the point that his name was dropped 13 times in the first minutes of the final presidential debate.
America inoculated with viral video
YouTube was just a fun way to burn off a few hours at work until hip-hop artist Will.i.am launched the 4-minute, 30-second clip of artists singing the speech about hope that Barack Obama gave after he lost the New Hampshire primary. In the first two weeks it was posted on YouTube and Obama’s campaign website, the “Yes We Can” video drew more than 14 million page views. Can we spread the word without the filter of a political machine? Why yes, yes we can.
No one does it better than Fred Armisen, though
Audiences are captivated by new technologies deployed by CNN. Baiting the hook: John King’s magic screen. Setting it: the hypnotic electronic fever chart that tracked the response of undecided votersin real time — during the debates.
Star light, star bright
Sure, we’re electing a president and all, but we’re also unofficially choosing our next generation of news personalities. The brightest star? MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who regularly wallops CNN behemoth Larry King in the ratings. Maddow leans left, but it’s her regular, good-natured sparring matches with Pat Buchanan that suggest a new era in respectful, non-yelling television partisanship. Honorable mention: No- nonsense Campbell Brown, who emerged from the shadows of network news to anchor the pre- Anderson hour on CNN with precision and personality.
The resurrection of “SNL”
Satirists are re-energized by the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah “Caribou Barbie” Palin for veep, as are members of the party core, who embrace sexism as a form of endearment in the political arena and show it by waving signs reading “America’s Hottest Governor” on the convention floor.
See you in the White House, Paris
McCain needles Obama for allegedly being just a celebrity, like Paris Hilton. The socialite’s McCain-donor parents respond by withdrawing their support. Hilton, aided by writer Adam McKay (“Talladega Nights,” “Anchorman”) and producer Chris Henchy (“Entourage”), issues a rebuttal that excoriates “that wrinkly white- haired guy” and includes a more thoughtful energy policy than either real candidate had laid out. Oh, and the promise to paint the White House pink if she’s elected. All this and proof that the best teleprompter reader in the campaign might not be Obama.
Cultural creatives available in GOP styles too
McCain solos on “Saturday Night Live” the weekend before Election Day, spoofing opposite Tina Fey, as Palin, as host of a late- night QVC show. “This past Wednesday, Barack Obama purchased airtime on three major networks. We, however, can only afford QVC,” he said. Then McCain and Fey pitched a set of commemorative plates celebrating the 10 town hall meetings McCain wanted with Obama (blank, because Obama took a pass) and jewelry from the McCain Fine Gold collection (get it, McCain-Feingold?).
They shoulda gone with Bubba
For the past four election cycles Family Circle magazine readers have picked the new president correctly by voting for one political family’s cookie recipe over another. This year, Cindy McCain’s Oatmeal-Butterscotch Cookies were favored over Michelle Obama’s citrus and almond Shortbread Cookies, 54 percent to 44 percent. Bill Clinton’s fave Oatmeal Cookie recipe got just 2 percent of the vote before his wife, Hillary, conceded the nomination to Obama. All of this might have just slipped right into the electronic dustbin were it not for someone out there noticing that the McCain recipe is nearly identical to that found on the back of the butterscotch chip bag.
He said it with a straight face
During the July 27, 2007, YouTube online primary debates, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper introduced Billiam the Snowman, an animated character from Point Hope, Alaska. Billiam, who sounded an awful lot like “Saturday Night Live’s” claymation character Mr. Bill, noted that he felt that global warming, the single most important issue to the snowmen of the country, was being neglected. “What, as president, will you do to ensure my son will live a full and happy life?” the frosty father asked. Predictably, Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the greenest candidate on the panel, nailed the answer, drawing a link between global warming and the nation’s reliance on coal and petroleum. “We don’t have to have our snowmen melting,” he offered.
Mirror, mirror
Michelle Obama called out as an “elitist” for suggesting Americans might use part of their $600 economic stimulus check to buy earrings, followed by Vanity Fair magazine calling out Cindy McCain for wearing an outfit (and jewelry) at the GOP convention valued at $300,000, and, later, McCain/Palin campaign calling itself out in finance reports that revealed $150,000 spent to outfit Palin, her husband and five children for the campaign trail.
Yeah, he’s a rock star
At least five times during the primary campaign Obama found himself calling for the EMTs because swooning fans had fainted in the audience.
