I watch awful animations so you don't have to

[sabotabby]

marnanel clearly hates me, so he sent me a link to the YouTube videos of Mike Huckabee. I didn't know that Huckabee made animation, did you? Now this knowledge can not be un-known.

Watch on YouTube

[It's here, but you shouldn't watch it.]

Naturally, no one has bothered to caption or transcribe this video, so I'll do my best, in the service of web accessibility and also so that you never need to suffer through actually watching this.



We begin with some patriotic music and the cheerful title: "Learn Our History: Take pride in America's past presents." Presents what? Presents a godawful flash animation is what!

Anachronistically dressed, blond little Addison enters a room where some ambiguously ethnic kid has a helmet on his head. He joyfully informs her that, through a series of equations, the glasses of the Tenth Doctor, and what appears to be a brightly painted cardboard box, he has invented time travel. I tried that once too.



Anyway, instead of journeying a week into the future to discover winning lottery numbers like normal people would (thus creating a temporal paradox because of which they can never enjoy their wealth) or travelling to a future that has jetpacks, Addison and the Time Sprog travel to a time when "America suffered from a financial, international and moral crisis."

Hmm, the Gilded Age? The horrific labor conditions of the early 20th century? The Great Depression?

Nope! We're going back to 1977.


Do I make the Watchmen joke, or do I make the Death Wish joke? It's the same joke anyway. By the way, did you know that there are no skyscrapers in DC? See, edumakation!


They encounter a character whose "morals are just gone." Who happens to have dark skin. And who also happens to be gay. I'm sure that's just coincidence, though.


What does the green mean? I don't know. They don't explain this. Instead, they start talking about Islamic fundamentalists. Who are, according to the animation, the same thing as communists. In a creepily cheerful voice, the Time Sprog explains about the Iranian hostage crisis without actually mentioning Iran, which is a very odd thing to do in an animation ostensibly meant to educate children about historical events.

I am pretty amused that they consider all of Central and South America to be a "domocracy" in 1977.

Also, I want to live in a DOMOCRACY!


(Kidding. There are no kittens allowed in a Domocracy.)

Then a woman says, I kid you not, "Oh no! This is bad. This is very bad."

Danger lurked around every corner!


Fortunately, the danger was mostly from Microsoft clip art and white boys with dreads.


Then the Time Sprog, who now has a sonic screwdriver and has inexplicably turned black, dons his helmet and runs towards the camera, screaming: "THIS IS SPARTA!"

(I am only making up the last three words in the sentence above.)

The video then informs us that it will tell us about one man who set out to make a huge impact.

Go on, guess who it is. Just guess.


OH DEAR GOD IT'S A CALIFORNIA RAISIN KILL IT WITH FIRE NOW.

Reagan: "God God God Flag Flag."


Then the Berlin Wall fell for some reason. I don't know, a wizard did it.


The Prydonian Academy it ain't.

Anyway, if you want to watch, there are apparently others, but this is as much as my poor beleaguered brain can take.

Comments

[metalana.livejournal.com]

oog, I hate video game styles, why use them when you don't have to...

I just hunted down and watched the work of 8 videographers vying to do a small leftie academic grant project. Some artsy, but mostly cheesy (silent video + bad music + text in unreadable colours). Not all camera-shaking was for artistic effect. If I had to turn off the video partway through, I figure there won't be much audience for our project... My brain needs a wash.

[sabotabby]

I shouldn't talk because video and animation are about the hardest things ever. But if one's content is also shit, it's just abominable.

[metalana.livejournal.com]

http://www.studioconceptions.com/easy/so_easy.html

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

You know, I was actually there in the eighties, or at least I thought I was, and I don't remember neoliberalism being anything like as wonderful as they're making out. I thought I remembered it being bloody awful, in fact. But if that's what they're teaching the kids these days, maybe my memory is just getting old and shaky. A farthing, that was a small copper coin, looked something like a cent.

[sabotabby]

I remember it being pretty grim and awful and massacres in Guatemala and such. But I was young, so maybe I remember it wrong too.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

My dad had to take a buy-out from his union job (and never had a job as good as that gain), farms were failing all around my midwestern town and my mom and me ended up on food stamps after a divorce.

And I remeber recieving a good education in geography from hearing about the endless string of wars during that time on the nightly news. No, I don't remeber the Reagan-adoring crowds and roads paved with gold back then that the neo-liberals talk about either

[radiumhead.livejournal.com]

I thought Reagan was awesome when I was a kid. Not as much, now.

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

When I was six years old I "rebelled" against my hippy mother by saying that I loved Richard Nixon. Nevermind I didn't know quite who he was, I was just recycling quotes from the Reaganite Alex P. Keaton character from Family Ties. The year I did that for will be my shame for the rest of my life lol

[sabotabby]

I had about six months of Randroidness (which, to be fair, was something that I saw at the time as not incompatible with anarchism). The horror!

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

oh man, I just remembered I can cop to a year or two of listening to Rush Limbaugh when I was 13-14 *head-desk* Though I think that all politically minded people can claim a "when I was young and naive" story lol

Thanks for posting this! I saw this on some more lefty blogs but this take-down of it was the best.

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK

[sabotabby]

The horror...the horror...

[theonlytwin.livejournal.com]

what. i don't.

WHAT.

[sabotabby]

I am afraid to watch the one on the origins of WWII. Seriously afraid.

[theonlytwin.livejournal.com]

DON'T.

i just did, and DON'T.

and if you do, maybe follow it with this: lol Zizek.

[sabotabby]

AWWW is Zizek sick again? Someone really needs to get that guy a Kleenex.