THIS IS RIDICULOUS! HOW CAN ANY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE SAY
THIS… oh wait… it’s not real.
That was my reaction when I saw this ad because, as much as
I dislike Santorum, anyone who would make this statement is mentally unstable.
I thought this until I saw who the creators were: Americans For A More American
America (a political satire site); however, I actually believed that Santorum
said this for a second, just like a lot of other people on Facebook.
But I’m smart enough to point out satire when I see it, so
why did this take me a while? This is because Americans For A More American
America was clever when parodying Santorum. For the first part of the
statement, the group used language that was similar to the way Santorum spoke.
He actually said on his website that the Obama Department of Justice “seems to
favor pornographers over children and families.” This is almost word-for-word
with the first sentence of the parody, making at least the first part of it
very believable. After that, the message becomes exaggerated with emphasis on
gay pornography and calling the gay lifestyle a “deathstyle.” But what really
made me feel stupid after realizing that this was fake was the last sentence:
“This is the one of only a few things I see eye to eye on with the Taliban.”
That hit it home for me and turned my rage into laughter. He’s crazy, but he’s
not that crazy. But given what people already know about Santorum and his gay
bashing and views on homosexuality, the statements aren’t that unrealistic.
This causes people to think, “Yeah, he would say that,” which leads people to
believe that the quote is real… that is until they read the last sentence…
hopefully.
The thing I find interesting about this is that AFAMAA (I
don’t feel like typing out the whole name again) was very sneaky in this parody
with the gradually increasing exaggeration. This makes the audience not fully
aware that what they’re reading is really a joke, thus causing anger in those
who haven’t caught on yet.
Still, the name, Americans For A More American America,
should trigger some questions about the legitimacy of the quote.
Okay, while I was reading the first few sentences, all that was running through my head was "and people actually vote for this idiot?!" However, it is obviously something that he would not say, especially at the end, so it was easy to tell that this was fabricated. It is rather scary, however, that people can take something we know about a candidate and make it into something that terrifies us more than anything else. They were pretty sneaky with this one, but I think that if we really know the candidates (which we should, as we are the ones voting), we can understand that this sort of statement would not even come from one of them.
ReplyDeleteWell, I have to admit that I felt like a complete dumbass when I read the fourth sentence and realized that it was fabricated. AFAMAA was quite clever in their satirization, it was subtle enough in the beginning so it looked as if it were an actual quote, but by the middle you could definitely tell that it was an obvious fabrication.
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