Barack Hussein Obama : Raising The Mammoth!
Do any of you remember a few years back when the Discovery Channel aired it’s special
“Raising The Mammoth?” Well, I sure as hell do.
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I don’t remember exactly how long Discovery promoted this much anticipated television event but it sure as heck seemed like it went on for at least a year. They had advertisements in every issue of their magazine, during every commercial break on their network. They had intense, dramatic and very well produced TV ads running on practically any channel you ‘clicked’ to. They advertised in news-papers, radio, flyers . . .they even got local papers to pick up the story.
As the “television event”, (and that is what they built it into, an actual ‘event’) drew near the ads became even more intense. TV ads were turned into “mini-epics”. The “promotion” of this “Mammoth Event” seemed to dwarf any and all programming on TV for the entire season. The phrasing and verbiage changed as well.
Discovery began by “suggesting” you would or should watch. They suggested “others” would be watching. They “implied” it could be a “television event”. They suggested the program would change TV, change your thinking!
Around the last month of the promotion and “hype” they were literally “Telling You” that you “could not miss this television event!” They were “telling you” that you were going to watch. They were telling you that “The World” would be watching. They were telling you that is was going to “change your thinking . . . forever!”
Like a lot of other folks your friend Mad bought into all of this “hype.” Hell, I did more than buy into it, I became part of it!
I told everyone I knew. When I encountered someone that wasn’t as intrigued as I was I talked to them until they were. I would holler through the house for family members to run in so they could catch one of these fantastic commercials about the mammoth. God forbid you hadn’t seen the commercial yet! It became a water-cooler topic at work. My wife and I would discuss it at dinner. My father and I would talk about it. I would read every ad, listen to every radio spot, hovering like an addict awaiting a “fix.” Just one more bit of information! One more second of footage! I bought it! Hook line and sinker.
Finally the “television event” of the year came. It was the day of the Mammoth! My home was in a frenzy. Co-workers were calling on the ride home, everyone checking with one another to make sure they had a place to watch the mammoth. People offered their homes to one another.
I drove to my Parents house. I showed up as if it were the Super Bowl. My game face on, big foam-finger . . . we were going to watch the unearthing of a wooly mammoth!
We were actually going to see this ancient specimen raised from it’s crypt in the Siberian Tundra after thousands of years!
The suspense was agonizing and pleasurable at the same time.
The time came . . . everyone was seated, the room quiet and the event began. It started out with the “mammoth team” and it’s leader French polar explorer Bernard Burgues describing how he had discovered the mammoth’s tusks in 1997, the Jarkov family (the nomadic Dolgon reindeer herders or whom the mammoth was named) led Burgues to the site where they believed the entire animal to be frozen and an international team of scientists was quickly assembled to extract the mammoth.
The program continued to show us the “mammoth team” preparing for their quest. This went on for an hour. It seemed a bit much, yet we watched intensely. With the ultimate goal of this team in mind we understood them wanting us to get to know the “mammoth team” and become part of their quest.
The second hour came! We watched the “mammoth team” prepare for their travel across the tundra. Then we watched the “mammoth team” travel across the tundra.
Difficult and tedious and beset by foul weather and failing Cold War-era equipment they trudged on. We trudged on with them. This was after all an event two and a half years in the making!
Again this seemed a bit much, but now we were invested! We were part of the “mammoth team” We found the tusks, met the nomads, planned the journey! We decided on the best method for extraction! We traveled the frozen tundra! We couldn’t give up now! Not now! We were so close to making television history! World History! We were about to raise The Mammoth!
No. We were about to dig. The third hour began. We dug, and dug and chipped and cut and melted and dug. We stopped to talk about our digging and our digging and our chipping and our cutting and our melting. Then . . . we dug, we raised chunks of tundra and we dug. We stopped for horrible weather. Then . . . we dug. We stopped for malfunctions and equipment break-downs . . . then . . . we dug. 45 minutes later . . .we were still digging.
Finally one of our team members shouted “Hair!” What?! We all perked back up from our weary slouches, did someone shout hair? They had! Someone found hair!
Reddish brown tufts of hair poking through hard as steel chunks of Siberian tundra!
Could this be it?! Finally!!
“Shouldn’t we hurry?” I thought to myself. “There are only 12 minutes left! We have to hurry!” I said.
They yelled again. It was the Mammoth! A wholly preserved mammoth! We were ready to raise the mammoth! Now!
I shook with excitement! This was really it! No one was slouching on the couch now. No one was busy eating their munchies. It was quiet . . . again.
The chains and ropes slugged their way up out of the tundra as if the weight of all the eyes of the world watching slowed them down. Then, cheers from the TV!
“This is it!” someone yelled. Up from the frozen tundra in plain view of the eyes of the world rose . . .
. . . a giant rectangular hunk of frozen tundra.
My eyes and brain flickered back and forth. “Where is it?” “Did it fall?” “Was it still down in the hole under the now raised tundra?” “Was it inside?” “Did we have time to chip it out?” “How would we have time to chip it out?!?” “Time was almost up!”
Then the “team” quickly showed us the reddish tufts of hair. Confirmed that it was indeed mammoth hair and that a full specimen had just been unearthed and was perfectly preserved within. They went on to quickly tell us it would take YEARS to let the mammoth thaw naturally. Then we watched as the block of ice believed to contain the mammoth got carried by helicopter to an underground permafrost tunnel in
As the credits began to shrink a new intense Ad for an “Encore Presentation” flickered on the screen!
I could feel the color leave my face. I now questioned everything, The over the top narration and Jeff Bridges’s bland delivery. The “curse” the nomads attributed to plaguing the excavation. French people in general. Helicopters. Snow. Everything basically sucked. Nothing but a helicopter carrying a big frozen chunk of
I was speechless, eyes locked blankly on the screen. Someone stood up in the room, at first I couldn’t see who. Then the TV clicked off. There was a slight crackle of static electricity and finally blackness. I saw my fathers reflection in the TV screen. He gently set down the remote control, took the last sip of his Coca-Cola and set down the empty glass and rubbed his head. I stood up.
We looked at one another. We could feel disappointment suffocating the room. My father asked quietly “You working tomorrow?”
“Uh . . . yeah, yeah I’m going in.” I replied breathlessly.
I walked towards the front door, my father walked toward his bedroom. Just as I was shutting the door to begin my disheartened walk to the car I heard something. I heard it clear as day . . .
. . .Clear as day and identical to the involuntary words spilling from my own mouth.
“Bull-Shit!”
It was a “television event.” It was an “epic program.” It did “change my thinking.”
The “world did watch.” We “couldn’t have missed it.” We could not possibly have tuned into a competitors channel.
It was brilliant. Brilliant “Hype.” Brilliant “Promotion.” Brilliant use of advertising and advertising dollars. More importantly . . . it was “bull-shit.”
It left many viewers cold and disappointed. A sense of emptiness, incompletion and being left right back where we started.
Nothing new. Nothing gained other than contempt.
It was a perfect out-line and working model of the Barack Hussein Obama Campaign for President.
John McCain does need to be cautious. There have been plenty of terrible movies, “television events” and concerts that sold lots of tickets and made lots of money.
John McCain should also be “happy.” So should you.
Barack Hussein Obama had a great opening weekend at the box-office. His paid critics (the main stream media) gave him great reviews. Barack sold lots of “tickets.”
Opening weekend is over my friends. The summer concert schedule has changed!
As we approach the political Oscars in November people will realize Obama’s movie had no plot, was loaded with plagiarized material and now only plays to a crowd of sorely misguided Bush hating fanatics.
People will notice the momentum of a “small budget” “independent” saga playing to the hearts and minds of the Nation. Town by town, city by city . . . there will be “Oscar Buzz.”
When the votes come in people with a conscience will have no choice but to vote for the best. The best script. The best screenplay. The best director. The most authentic and the best man. John McCain.
Slainte’
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1 comments:
Fantastic article, brilliantly sums up the fact that Barack is little more than a "marketing phenomenon". The words "fake", "phoney" and "fraud" also spring to mind from time to time.
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