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Tod Kelly

Tod is a writer from the Pacific Northwest. He is also serves as Executive Producer and host of both the 7 Deadly Sins Show at Portland's historic Mission Theatre and 7DS: Pants On Fire! at the White Eagle Hotel & Saloon. He is  a regular inactive for Marie Claire International and the Daily Beast, and is currently writing a book on the sudden rise of exorcisms in the United States. Follow him on Twitter.

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9 Responses

  1. trizzlor says:

    One of the things that makes this whole Democracy experiment work is that how well you campaign is actually a very good predictor of how well you serve your constituents as an elected official. So when Joe Shmoe sees this ad and thinks “My kid could do that, I should vote for the other guy”, he’s mostly right. But imagine these things flipped. and the Thad Cochrans of the world made terrible ads but were actually cursed with being excellent stewards of government. All of these secret geniuses getting outvoted by glad-handing frat-boys, then we’d really be done for.Report

  2. Burt Likko says:

    My goodness. Did they make that thing with PowerPoint? I suspect the whole thing got shot in a day at a public park, and it never occurred to anyone to make a separate audio track in the studio free from background noise.

    The parody of Bill Bailey is actually pretty good, IMO. I’m not sure what the one dude in the Boomers who just stands there does other than wear the Elvis wig, though.

    Great find.Report

    • Tod Kelly in reply to Burt Likko says:

      @burt-likko I was thinking…

      One of these days we should go back and collect all of the bad political ads and put them onto to one page, that we add onto over time, that we can link to whenever we feature new terrible ads. Kind of like a bad political ad hall of fame.Report

    • zic in reply to Burt Likko says:

      I’m not sure that the parody does work.

      Most people don’t hear Bill Bailey as anything but longing for someone; so on an emotional level, the jingle sort of reinforces longing for Cochran.Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to zic says:

        I think most people don’t know the song’ swords anymore. It’s an old-timely, Dixieland-jazzy kind of song they’ve heard as an instrumental… Often played at political conventions.Report

      • Mike Schilling in reply to zic says:

        What even fewer people know is what it’s about: a sportswriter who wrote under the name “Bill Bailey” abandoning one Chicago newspaper for another. His real name? Bill Veeck, Sr. His son, Bill junior, was the mad genius who, as owner of the St. Louis Browns, hired the three-foot-tall Eddie Gaedel as a plnch-hitter with a six-inch strike zone.

        And now you know… The REST of the story.Report

      • Burt Likko in reply to zic says:

        Yeah, he’s one of the few players whose career stats I can rattle off from memory: PA: 1. BB: 1. BA: [null set]. He was really an actor, wasn’t he?Report

  3. Burt Likko says:

    Oh, hey, I almost forgot. This guy is running for Governor in California. And he’s a pretty credible candidate, otherwise. I understand the desire to humanize a political figure, but I’m not at all sure why ninety seconds of a very high-production value pet video should make me want to vote for the guy:

    Remember, this is the fellow who has to get past an actual elected officeholder to obtain the equivalent of the Republican nomination in California’s jungle primary system. An elected officeholder who is also Rob Schneider’s sex double:
    Report