Herman Cain's latest ad is really special

Shades of Monty Python and The Holy Grail...

Herman Cain has really gone off the deep end, and has now become a comedy act.



I thought we had heard the last of Mr. Cain's bizarre campaign ads after he dropped out of the Republican leadership race. But now he's pitching sickofstimulus.com to promote his ideas about smaller and cheaper government.

Interestingly, the site has a poll:

After viewing the Rabbit video, do you think it was offensive?Even if you didn’t like it, do you think it should've been censored by YouTube?If the video had remained down permanently, do you think it was a violation of Cain Connections’ First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech?

I missed the censorship episode, although I am pretty sure no animals were harmed in the filming of this bit of crazy. There are much worse things out there.

More unintentionally disgusting branding

Via Buzzfeed

Urban Dictionary: Cleveland Steamer (not for the squeamish)

It's not as obscure as most coprophilic sex acts defined on UD. This one entered popular culture via Tenacious D:

I think the creative team behind these anti-drug-smuggling ads was on drugs

Ad by JWT Barcelona

Via Ads of The World

Here's one advertising blogpost we can all agree on

Via Sociological Images

I don't think that first line of copy means what you think.

Hitler employed as shampoo pitchman

A bizarre story from The Drum. This Turkish shampoo brand has decided not only to be unforgivably sexist, but to Godwin up their ad as well:

"Beneath the images of the Nazi leader the firm typed the message 'If you are not wearing a woman’s dress, you should not use her shampoo either.' 

The piece then concludes: 'Here it is, a real men’s shampoo, Biomen.'"

So, Hitler is a "real man"?

Turkey was neutral for most of the Second World War, sheltering Jewish refugees from Europe.

Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League's National Director, issued this statement:

“This video is just the latest example of the use of Holocaust imagery in some countries to sell commercial products, which has contributed to the trivialization of and desensitization to the unparalleled horrors of the Holocaust. There can never be any justifiable purpose for using the images of Hitler, Nazis or any other depiction of the Nazi killing machine to sell products or services.”

Of course we've seen the Nazi leader in ads before. But usually as a symbol of evil, not as a "macho" pitchman.

Welcome to Obamaville

Rick Santorum's team have cooked up a rather epic plan to discredit the policies of US President Barack Obama: Obamaville.

It's a dystopian "Anytown, USA" in 2014, two years into President Obama's second term: People are out of work, Main Street is a ghost town, gas prices are up, religious bigotry (sorry... "freedom of religion") is under attack and people have to deal with the horrors of semi-socialized healthcare.



Oh yeah, and the USA is under nuclear threat from Iran.

Or is its biggest threat its own President?

Dun dun dun...

David Weigel at Slate talks about the weird TV thing. To me its the least of this ad's idiocies.

For example, what is the meaning behind this baby image? Is this supposed to be "pro-life"? If so, it's confusing.

And what the hell does this symbolize? Sexual immorality? Loss of free speech? Too many public libraries full of secular books?

And then we're transported back to the industrial revolution for some reason.

Hey, cool! It's The Matrix!

Perhaps they'll explain all these random images when the 8-part webisode series launches on the Santorum campaign site in a couple of weeks.

But for the time being, let's imagine what "Santorumville" would look like. (I'm thinking something like Stepford, Connecticut, but with more Jesus.)

Kazakhstan gold medal athlete saluted with Borat anthem

Oh God Oh God Oh God.

If it wasn't in mainstream media, I would never believe it.

According to the Telegraph:

Mariya Dmitriyenko had just won the gold medal in the 75 target event at the 10th Arab Shooting Championship in Kuwait and as she stood on the podium with the other medal winners she was expecting to hear the sound of the Kazakhstan national anthem. 

Instead the obscene lyrics of the spoof Kazakhstan anthem from the film Borat began to play...

Uh-oh.

From the Kuwait Times:

The organizing committee of the International Shooting Grand Prix issued a statement yesterday regarding the accidental use of Borat’s parody national anthem in place of Kazakhstan’s real national anthem at a medal ceremony in Kuwait on Thursday. The committee accepted responsibility and offered further apologies for the incident. “The committee gave an official apology to the Kazakh delegation to the tournament, and the national anthem was replayed correctly. The Organizing Committee of the International Grand Prix expresses its utter regret for this unintentional mistake and reaffirms its great respect to its brothers and friends from the Republic of Kazakhstan, and affirms the deep sports relations between the Kazakh and Kuwait shooting federations.”

...Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the incident “is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation, which we intend to conduct”. ITAR-Tass quoted shooting team member Oksana Stavitskaya as saying that Asian Shooting Federation President Sheikh Salman Al-Sabah had apologized to the team. “Sheikh Salman personally apologized to us. 

He recognized that the use of the music from the scandalous film in place of the anthem of Kazakhstan was completely a mistake of the organizers. He explained that the awards ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract,” Stavitskaya said. The Kazakh news agency Tengri quoted team Coach Anvar Yunusmetov as saying tournament organizers had downloaded various countries’ national anthems from the Internet, and had also got the Serbian national anthem wrong.

This incident must have added insult to injury in Kazakhstan, where the government threatened to sue Sacha Baron Cohen for his Borat act in "Da Ali G Show" days.

Baron Cohen used the threat as an opportunity to provoke them further:


Borat Response to Kazakhstan Government by BoratSon

When the movie came out, it was not released by the central Asian 20th Century Fox distributor following a request by the Kazakh government, although some Kazakhs apparently find it funny. Gold medalist Maria Dmitrienko seemed to take it well. But her team demanded the medal ceremony be corrected and restaged.

The movie was also banned in most Arab countries, which may explain the blunder.