Sometimes you all point me to things and because they are so out there, I just can’t bring myself to comment. This is one of those times:
That’s GOP frontrunner doing a reimagination of “Imagine,” dedicated to Pizza.
I got nothing.
by John Cole| 64 Comments
This post is in: Clown Shoes, Teabagger Stupidity
Sometimes you all point me to things and because they are so out there, I just can’t bring myself to comment. This is one of those times:
That’s GOP frontrunner doing a reimagination of “Imagine,” dedicated to Pizza.
I got nothing.
Comments are closed.
Tonybrown74
Oh, jeez!
Michael Steele 2.0 …
Brachiator
At least he’s not shooting at anybody, a la Gov Perry.
And although it’s cheezier than Bill Clinton playing the sax on Arsenio, it’s in the same territory.
Tom Johnson
On the other hand, CEOs of struggling companies do all kinds of things to pull together and motivate their teams. Performances like this are supposed to be cheesy. I saw a very, very serious CEO dress up as Elvis for a staff party, and another ride into the room as rootin’ tootin gunslingin’ cowboy atop a hobby horse.
So, you know, it’s no big deal, really. Also, he has a pretty nice voice. Maybe he could get a spot in John Ashcroft’s barbershop quartet.
RareSanity
Since this feels like an “open-ish” thread, I want to be the first to recognize Dougerhead, for his outstanding leadership during SpamfilterGate last night.
The BJ DEFCON level rose as high 2 before Doug got the situation under control…
Corner Stone
I loved this video, and I don’t even much care for Herman Cain. It’s supposed to be parody. If I were he, I’d embrace it as this plays to his “realness” that normal “real” people find likeable about him.
I wonder if while CEO he ever had a pizza deal where you bought the pizza and got the sexy breadsticks for free?
James
I thought it was cute.
Corner Stone
@RareSanity:
And since it is indeed an open-ish thread I just wanted to say, “Goddamn! Some multi-nymmed jackal has been fucking up this joint!”
kindness
If John Lennon was alive he would kick Cain’s ass but good on that, then he’d get his lawyers to sue the dumb fu** for every penny his shitty pizza ever made him.
Samara Morgan
Cole, why dont you make a front page post titled IS ROMNEY ELECTABLE?
i guarantee pageclicks.
:)
chopper
at least his voice ain’t bad.
The Ancient Randonneur
Speaking of cheese and just n case you weren’t listening to NPR yesterday evening, William Shatner has a new album out. Wired has a write up and some video of him talking about it.
Maybe the real progressives can get Shatner to primary Obama?
RareSanity
@Corner Stone:
I don’t even know how Doug tracked down the exact offending comment, while constantly removing comments from the spamfilter and approving moderation queue.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
how about you get your own fucking blog?
joeyess
Here’s a link so you can all write a letter to the boardrooms of the world.
Here’s my letter to the Masters of the Universe.
PurpleGirl
I wonder if he got permission from either the record label or from the Lennon Estate to use the Imagine tune for a parody? It is copyrighted.
maya
@kindness:Parody is exempt from copyright infringement. Or else Al Yankovic would be in deep cop car poop.
Ben Cisco
You’re right, it is pretty cheesy. But 1) it was a pizza place, so if one were ever going to be cheesy on purpose, etc. and 2) there’s way too much to seriousy smack him around on just now, from playing overseer for El Rushbo and the gang to Plan 999 from Outer Space. I’ll give him a pass on this one.
Roger Moore
@The Ancient Randonneur:
There is the little, tiny problem that he’s as Canadian as Tim Horton’s.
joeyess
@kindness: Yoko may very well do that.
superking
@PurpleGirl:
I think parodies generally fall fair use, and given that he is wearing some sort of gown, you have to wonder if he was trying to make any money off this.
Anyway, based on this performance, I’d vote for the guy. But I enjoy using my franchise as a joke.
Librarian
I assume he changed the lyrics, otherwise he’d be singing lines like “Imagine no religion” and “imagine no possessions.”
Corner Stone
@Ben Cisco:
Haven’t read any of it yet, but I’ve seen a couple headlines questioning Cain’s links to the Koch Bros.
Samara Morgan
@Corner Stone: you asked me for an analysis of the AfPak conflict by one of my shayyks.
i am not going to give you any live links, sry….stalkers abound, lol.
But one of my shayyks is Dr.Ghamidi and he linked this by Dr.Khan, who was killed last year.
jayjaybear
@Roger Moore: And kind of looks like he ate Tim Horton’s, to boot. No, the whole company, not “a” donut.
The Moar You Know
He’s not a bad singer. Seriously. Got a nice baritone and knows how to use it.
Can’t stand “Imagine” in the first place, so to my ears this is nothing but a vast improvement.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: why dont you?
The Moar You Know
@PurpleGirl: Doesn’t need it – works of parody are not affected by copyright law.
It’s considered good form to get permission, but it is not required.
Roger Moore
@maya:
That’s not quite correct on either point. Parody is considered to be a form of criticism, which gives it enhanced standing under fair use considerations, but it isn’t a get out of infringement free card. But winning on fair use is a complex consideration, and other things- like whether Cain was trying to profit from his version- would also come into effect. Also, too, Yankovic avoids problems with copyright infringement by getting permission to do his parodies, at least when he’s using somebody’s music rather than parodying their style.
Brachiator
@RareSanity:
Wow sounds like I missed some fun. Or extra crazy with a side of whack.
JGabriel
On the one hand, one can make a case for a politician / CEO willing to mock himself by re-jiggering a classic song into a parody paean for the source of his fortune, pizza.
On the other hand, the execution of it made my eyeballs melt and sent my brain into anaphylactic … twitch twitch arrggh … help me, I’m dying!
(Author falls out of his chair, curled into an unconscious ball on the ground, blood streaming from his eyes, ears, and nose.)
.
AuldBlackJack
@ Cole;
Please put a “I support the occupy movement” banner at the top of your blog.
HTML here
Thanks.
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: hes winning.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: this is my garden, chopper.
an american liberal dog-lovin’ blog.
Where is your garden, Candide?
JGabriel
@Samara Morgan: (JGabriel in a coma, cannot respond.)
.
Ben Cisco
#HermanCainPizzaJams.
__
Brilliant.
Roger Moore
@Samara Morgan:
And you can trust a Rasumusen poll about as far as you can throw it. They have a strong pro-Republican slant in all their polls- at least in part because of a bad voter model- and far away from election time tend to act more like an organ of the Republican party than an independent polling firm. Don’t just take my word for it, either; check out what Nate Silver has to say about them.
Klaus
Heh, that’s actually a little funny. DErp.
Skippy the Wondermule
Half way thru it, I started having an out-of-body experience. Did I come back to America in 2011 or the madhouse of Kubla Khan?
Is it both?
Rick Taylor
I googled through youtube to find the first Republican presidential debate shortly after it came out. I played it, and when it opened introducing some guy Cain as the former CEO of godfather pizza, I wondered if I’d accidentally found some Onion parody of the debate instead. Since then, nothing’s changed my general impression of Cain.
Samara Morgan
@Roger Moore: i invented rasmussen statistics.
Conservitards believe in rasmussen statistics. is it conservative backfire effect or right-wing-authority tendency?
slag
@RareSanity: Yeah DougJ was good. But really, the fastest way forward would have been to look at what anomalies were happening on the blog around the time the wackiness ensued. Those comments in the Santa Rosa thread were the more obvious starting point (Steeplejack!). That said, Dougj was busy trying to both minimize the damage and search for the cause, which took a lot of skill and effort. So, in that sense, he did do a really good job.
JGabriel
@Samara Morgan:
(A single bleeding eye pops open on JGabriel’s prone comatose form)
Rasmussen Statistics : Statistics :: Fox News : News.
(Slumps back into coma.)
.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
I’m not the one constantly making demands, sorry. if you’re so obsessed with who posts on the FP and what Cole etc post, why don’t you just get your own blog and be done with it?
Samara Morgan
@JGabriel: dude.
in the UD.
not FAUXnews.
@chopper: you are the one that keeps calling for my banning.
getcher own blog an i swear ill never even visit.
:)
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
it’s cole’s garden, actually. you’re that annoying visitor who’s constantly demanding that the gardener plant the flowers you like and WHY DON’T YOU LIKE ORCHIDS LIKE I LIKE ORCHIDS??
gogol's wife
@chopper:
It’s a lost cause. Think about your blood pressure. That’s what I do.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
i think you have me confused with one of the characters that lives in your head.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: nope, im the annoying visiting herbologist that points out THAT SHIT WONT GROW HERE.
@Roger Moore: and Nate is my homeslice.
dintcha kno?
we both say demographics is destiny.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
well, you got the ‘annoying’ part right. as a gardener i’ve had plenty of annoying self-righteous douchebags who don’t grow shit at all tell me ‘you can’t grow that here’. as much as i enjoy proving them wrong, it’s better that they just shut the hell up in the first place. analogy over.
DougL
I say, “Let the Eagle Soar”
Roger Moore
@Samara Morgan:
Nate’s my homey from way back in his USENET days on rec.sport.baseball about 15 years ago. So, yes, I’ve known Nate since way before he was famous.
JGabriel
@Samara Morgan:
I know. I was agreeing with you. Just wanted to put it in that nice, succinct, SAT analogy formula.
.
Waldo
I was expecting worse. Same goes for his pizza.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: so you like dig having glibertarian front pagers wasting spacetime here?
i suppose you are planting okra in Alaska too.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Roger Moore: nice. i have followed him since he was Poblano.
Hes pretty leet.
Effin' Effie
Do you suppose he’s running for the presidency just so he can make people listen to him sing?
Roger Moore
@Samara Morgan:
Actually, rec.sport.baseball is turning out to have been a really cool place to have been in the mid nineties. There was a regular troll there who made fun of all the people who cared about statistical analysis, making nasty comments about how they were a bunch of computer geeks who didn’t really know anything about sports. Now about half of the regular posters he was criticizing are working somewhere in the sports business, either working as statistical analysts for major league teams or publishing Baseball Prospectus. Nate went from Prospectus to analyzing elections on 538 to working for the NYT. It’s like the revenge of the stats drunk computer nerds.
chopper
@Samara Morgan:
well, i’m not an obsessed stalker type, so honestly i really don’t care.
asiangrrlMN
You know, he can actually sing, and the song was kinda funny. He’s found his calling!
Lysana
I couldn’t listen through due to the lyrics and delivery style, but I agree with asiangrrlMN. He should’ve stuck to singing. Get some of that lounge-act crap knocked out of him and he’d make a fine gospel or soft rock singer.
JGabriel
Lysana:
Yeah, Cain could have been the Republican Al Green.
I feel like, having written that sentence, there must now be matter and anti-matter universes that just came into contact with each other and exploded in a fiery multi-verse apocalypse at that very same moment I coupled the word Republican with the name Al Green.
.
El Cid
I think it’s pretty funny — it’s the sort of thing you might see at some company Christmas thing or church fun night or some such.
Cain’s not weird ’cause of this — it’s his batshit craziness when it comes to anything having to do with public life.
Samara Morgan
@chopper: lol! of course you do.
or you wouldn’t bitch so much, you’d ignore me.
@Roger Moore: i have a song for that.
i fight dragons– the geek will inherit the earth.
Nate blew me away with his 2008 election analysis– stats on steroids.
when i was a stats TA my students called it sadistics.
Statisticians get no respect.
Rasmussen is like FOXnews. The Right didnt like the results they were seeing so they made up their own.
Samara Morgan
@Roger Moore:
yeah! totally spoofs their wingnut readers.
Colorado cell phone demographics really screwed their model in Colorado in 2010.
Ras predicted Tancredo and Buck….but then they hadn’t seen the viral youtube of Buck railing against gubmint loans for college students….it went viral at CU and CSU and students mailed the link to their parents. :)
It will be interesting to see the cell phone demographics in 2012….there are more no-landline households every year.