Hillary Clinton video spoofs "Sopranos"

Cafe Society
1

I’m not sure where to put this, here or in MPSIMS. I decided to put it here because of the “Sopranos” tie-in and not as a comment on her politics, but this can be moved if this isn’t the place.

I saw this on The McLaughlin Group a couple of weeks ago, but my computer was in the shop and I didn’t have access to YouTube to look for it then. The clip shows Ms. Clinton walking into a diner like the one the Sopranos gathered in at the end of the finale. “Don’t Stop Believing” is playing on the jukebox. The diner is filled with various people; a table full of Cub Scouts, a family, a young couple. Ms. Clinton sits at a booth and looks at the selections on the jukebox with songs such as “Get Ready” and “I’m A Believer.”

Bill sits at the booth and asks, “Anything look good?” Hilary replies, “There are some great choices.” She then says, “I ordered for the table.” Bill picks up a carrot stick and makes a face. “No onion rings?”

Ms. Clinton asks, “Where’s Chelsea?” Bill answers, “Parallel parking.”

Bill then asks, “How’s the campaign?” Hillary says, "Like you always say: ‘Focus on the good times.’ "

A large, menacing looking man passes by and scowls at Hillary. Bill says, “What’s the winning song? My money’s on Smash Mouth. Everybody wants to know how it’s gonna end.”

Hillary says “Ready?” and drops a coin in the jukebox.

Fade to black.

Hillary campaign video on YouTube

In the interests of full disclosure, I want to point out that after the video, a message comes on directing you to Ms. Clinton’s website to find out the winning song. I didn’t go to it and I’m not going to post the link. As I said, I wanted to keep this apolitical and compare this to the Sopranos finale since that generated tons of comment. Ms. Clinton’s campaign staff obviously counted on the publicity and controversy surrounding that episode and on a great number of people being familiar with it. It certainly held my attention as I rewound it a number of times.

2

I’m surprised she wants to draw a comparison between her family and Tony Soprano’s. Seems pseudo-clever to me.

3

I like this one.

4

I disagree. There are several of these up on YouTube, with a collective 1,000,000 views. And that’s in addition to the hits on her official website, which was reported to be a half million within a day or two and obviously far more by now. Other politicians would kill for those numbers.

And the Sopranos are merely an example of a common popular culture reference point. Nobody seriously can think she’s making a comparison to the Mafia, and only her political enemies would ascribe one to her. Spoofs don’t work that way.

So not pseudo-clever, but clever. Wit is always humanizing and that’s the aspect of her campaign that every commentator agreed needed working on. She broke all expectations. always a good thing.

5

The guy scowling at her, FYI, is Vincent Curatola, who played Johnny Sack on “The Sopranos.”

It was a bit cheesy, I thought. I loved “The Sopranos” (though I disagreed with the ending choice), but the video clip was a little dorky. Trying a bit too hard to be cool.

6

Anyone notice the complete lack of chemistry between her and Bill?

7

There may be a lot to read into that, but the simplest answer is just bad acting.
Acting is acting. The fact that an actor might have a real life personal relationship with a scene partner doesn’t change the fact that there is a performance going on- a performance that relies on both craft and skill.

The acting was just really terrible- forgivably terrible, since it wasn’t a dramatic piece featuring professional actors but rather a self-promo for a politician.
Still, the acting was terrible.

Worst delivery:
“There are some really great choices.”

Second worst delivery:
“No onion rings?”

Lack of chemistry in the performance isn’t any indicator of their personal relationship.

There was another Husband/Wife ad recently, Romney maybe???
There was an exchange:
Wife: “He likes to tell jokes, they aren’t always funny.”
Husband: really overdone “look of surprise” accompanying really overdone LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH “I think they’re funny!”
It was horrible horrible horrible acting. It made me gag. It was wooden and completely lacking in chemistry. But it didn’t lead me to assume anything about their real life personal relationship.

8

Ahh, Johnny Sack! I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even recognize him. :smack: Maybe because Curatola did such a good job of portraying a cancer patient near the end.

9

There is a meaningful difference between laughing at you and laughing with you. Numbers do not indicate support. People like watching car accidents too.

It’s a very laden comparison IMO, and I think it’s silly to dismiss it as merely a pop culture reference without considering what it refers to-- a dynastic family of sociopaths (philandering husband, stiff wife in denial because of the lifestyle he provides, ouch!). That was the first thing I thought of, and then wondered why Clinton would deliberately make such a comparison to herself and her family. Looks like she thought it would be a hip, cool reference, and it would be, if people didn’t think about it at ALL. Some won’t, but many will, especially people who don’t like her. Seems rather tone deaf to me. Spoofs do work that way when they are poorly considered and poorly rendered, as this one is IMO.

You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I retain mine that it was pseudo-clever and did not work. I thought it was laughably awful on several levels, and for me it highlighted her lack of awareness of how she comes off sometimes.

10

I thought it was funny. Bill is what really made it work. Sure, the acting was nowhere near professional level, but I laughed at his, “No onion rings?!” line. Still not as good as “The Last Days of Bill Clinton” though.

As to the comparison of the Sopranos and the Clintons, it hadn’t occured to me. I honestly don’t really see any similarities other than that Bill could use to lose a few pounds.

11

I figure there are four kinds of people who might watch that video:

(1) People who already like Hilary Clinton, and are going to vote for her.

(2) People who hate Hilary Clinton for utterly irrational reasons, who have already decided to find fault with anything she says or does because they have developed a hateful picture of her in their minds’ eyes and that picture will never change.

(3) People who oppose Hilary Clinton’s political candidacy for reasons having to do with her political opinions.

(4) People who like some of Hilary Clinton’s political opinions, think she is reasonably sharp and intelligent, but have difficulty voting for her because they perceive her as cold and inhuman.

This video is not going to mean anything to people who fall into category #1 - it’s certainly not going to lose her any current supporters. The people in category #2 won’t vote for Hilary if she starts turning water to wine and raising the dead, so it’s irrelevant from that perspective. It is my opinion that anyone who watches that video and starts drawing serious comparisons between the Clintons and the Sopranos - comparisons that have to do with sociopathy and organized crime - has already made up their mind about the Clintons.

The people in category #3 won’t care about this video; they want to see Hilary’s statements on the issues that affect them, and will change their minds about her candidacy if and when those statements start matching their own political opinions.

But for the people in category #4, this video, which is basically harmless, silly, fluff, might be of value. It demonstrates that Hilary - or at least someone on her team - is capable of humor, of self-mocking, of keeping it light and nonserious.

So the video could earn her votes from people who agree with but are afraid of her, and is profoundly unlikely to lose her any votes. Can’t see a reason that it’s a bad political move in that light.

12

Right.

The Hillary haters would - and do - find fault with absolutely anything she does, so she could link her and Bill to Mr. Rogers and get criticized.

The only nitpick I have is that you left out category #5) People who are just tuning in.

People forget that the vast majority of the country isn’t political, comes awake only during presidential elections, and can be swayed by appearances and images since they haven’t spent lots of time analyzing the candidates, the parties, or the issues.

Will some Hillary-haters watch the video just to feed their spite? Some, sure. But I would guess that far more would simply avoid it. The number of people who go through life feeding on their bile is a tiny minority. There will be 100,000,000+ voters in 2008. If one percent of them are actively laughing at Hillary, that would be a lot. Elections are decided by the 20,000,000+ in the middle, who by definition are excluded from the activists and haters.

I don’t see any downside to this video. It reaches to the people she wants to reach. The rest don’t matter.

13

I’m a registered, yellow-dog Dem, and I’ve yet to make my mind up about '08. Richardson, Clinton, Obama, and even Kucinich are quite palatable to me. It’s probably down to Richardson, Clinton, and Obama for me, and I thought that this presented a side to Hillary that was good to see. Having a laugh, being funny. Hillary certainly doesn’t pass the “drink a beer with test” that Bill or Bush have in spades (of course, with Bush, it’s “had” - if I had a chance to have a beer with him I’d dump it on his head). This helps to humanize her somewhat.

storyteller0910 essentially has it right, and as someone who is somewhere near category #4, it gave her a bump with me. I thought it was pretty clever and funny. The connections that Rubystreak made never occurred to me, and even after thinking about it, I laughed a little.

14

Anyone laying odds that she has not touched him since the MonicaGate scandal broke? That she has made it possible to appear in public but come ON, she can only act but so well.

Thinly veiled loathing is what I see when I see the two of them in the same shot.

Cartooniverse

15

They’re pretty inscrutable as a couple, but I get the feeling that the family business - politics - is what brings them together. I’m certain that both of them know each other very well, and the Monica business is only an issue because of the political damage it did to the family business. There are so many stories about Bill C’s philandering that there has to be truth to some of it, and Hillary was well aware of it.

Some people can compartmentalize parts of the relationship, and I think both of them do that very well. How he managed to do his job as president when all that stuff was happening is beyond me. I could see the rationalization behind the fling and I would wager it’s ancient history regarding the personal betrayal stuff. The political liability stuff is probably the only remnant of the whole thing between them.

I think they are bonded in an odd way that we’ll probably never quite get. I think they have genuine affection for each other on some level. Is it romantic love? Probably more of an ideological bond, and the bond behind raising a well-adjusted kid.

16

Gigli proved that the opposite isn’t necessarily true, either.

17

I think Mitt Romney should do the same thing, except using Big Love.

18

Yanno, I had not considered the public face in that way at all and that’s bad, because I used to spend an inordinate amount of time within 10-20 feet if famous people who were putting on their public face till the shot was over, then they got to shift to " I’m still in public with the crew but must still be on my guard sometimes" persona.

I believe you are quite right in what you wrote here. Thank you for writing it. And, to be honest, it’d be really nice in terms of humanity of they did have some kind of bond that has managed to survive this kind of public blistering.

19

Yes, but Hillary was in the Tony role. Made me think of the old bumper sticker, from the first Clinton administration, IOW, pre-Monica: “Impeach the President! (And her husband, too.)”