Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
Showing posts with label Leah Kauffman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leah Kauffman. Show all posts

Thursday, October 7, 2010

The Good Wife 2.2: Lou Dobbs, Joe Trippi, and Obama Girl

A superb Good Wife 2.2 on CBS this week, at turns riveting, delightful, and all together captivating.

The legal drama part was about as powerful as you'll find on the best lawyer show.  Will and Alicia represent an accused murderer who is acquitted, mainly because they smartly moved to exclude questionable evidence.  As Will says to Alicia, cases are won on the success of attempted exclusions.  But Cary for the prosecution is furious.  He's sure the client is guilty, and feeds a friend in the military some of the excluded evidence that makes the client look guilty.  What does the military have to do with this?   Turns out the acquitted Randy Simmons was in the military at the time the crime was committed, so they have jurisdiction - and another bite of the apple, because double jeopardy does not apply from civilian to military courts (just as it didn't with OJ from criminal to civil courts).

The military trial was outstanding, as good in its maneuvering as the kind of trial seen in A Few Good Men.   Will and Alicia face a tough judge, but they manage to out-maneuver and win her over in the end.  That was the serious part of the show.

The fun part involved the real Lou Dobbs and the real Joe Trippi as conflicting clients with the firm - conflicting because Trippi is Diane's client, Dobbs is being brought in by Derrick (Mr. Bond), and Trippi and Dobbs have bad political blood between them.   It's great to see real people woven so well into a fictional television show.

But in many ways the most fun part of the evening - with serious bite as well - concerns an Obama Girl-like video made by Florrick's former prostitute, Amber Madison.   I don't who wrote or sang the song, but it sounds exactly like the excellent hilarious work of Leah Kauffman, responsible for the writing and singing in Obama Girl.  And the production is a dead-on perfect satiric take on the original Obama Girl video produced by Ben Relles.   It's also worth noting that Amber Lee Ettinger played the original Obama Girl, and, well, as mentioned above, Florrick's prostitute is named Amber.

In our real world, outside of television, the Obama Girl video helped humanize Obama at a time when he needed to get known by Americans (see New New Media for more on the impact of the Obama Girl video on the Obama campaign).  But along with this serious impact, the Obama Girl video was fun - it was comedic satire.   The Florrick Girl video was delightful for we the viewers to see, but in the context of the show that was little funny about it.   Rather, it was created by Childs as a way of hurting Peter.   It's a Nixonian dirty trick, tailored for our viral video age, and Becca may be trying to retaliate by setting up a bogus Facebook-like page for Childs' son, where he will say bad things about his father.

I can't think of a better mix of real and fictional politics on a television show which breaks new ground with just about every episode.

See also Obama Girl Applauded in my Class at Fordham ... An Interview with Obama Girl Producer Ben Relles ... The Barely Political Revolution

and The Good Wife Starts Second Season on CBS




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The Plot to Save Socrates



"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book


Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Obama Girl to Hillary (with Love): Stop the Attacks!

Obama Girl is back with a brand new video - like her others, a mix of sage political advice (Hillary - stop attacking Obama, it only helps McCain), hilarious, incisive lyrics and special effects (my favorite, for some reason, is Obama Girl talking to Hillary in the diner), and a great, catchy tune.

Kudos, plaudits, and accolades to Ben Relles's BarelyPolitical.com team, Amber Lee Ettinger as Obama Girl, and Leah Kauffman for the songs and the singing. "Everyone's got a crush on Obama ... Chris Matthews, Bill Richardson, even George Clooney..." ... Hey, this video even has Bill Clinton playing a mournful saxophone...

Here's a special preview ... as I've been saying since the summer, when the history of this revolutionary campaign for the presidency is written, I guarantee it will have a chapter on the contribution of the Obama Girl videos to the YouTube generation...

(At the very least, I'll be writing about this in my new book - New New Media - watch for an announcement about that here soon.)



Additional links -

Interview I did with Ben Relles this Fall

Obama Girl visits my class at Fordham University

Thursday, November 1, 2007

BarelyPolitical.com Gives Ann Coulter the Business!



The BarelyPolitical.com team - Leah Kaufmann as songwriter/singer, and Ben Relles producer - turns its satirical attention to Ann Coulter in the above video. Except, rather than the Obama Girl videos which we were fun, this Coulter video has a much deserved serious political bite to the satire. (Well, the Giuliani video had a little of that bite, but this Coulter performance has much more.)

Obama Girl Amber Lee Ettinger - who I was pleased to have lecture in my class at Fordham in September (along with Ben Relles) - makes just a quick cameo appearance in this production. Instead, Kaufmann takes front and center stage - not only as singer and songwriter, as she was in the Obama Girl videos, but as the singer we can see.

Kaufmann is easily the leading satirical lyricist around these days. "Perfect me, make me petty, I want to be hateful like Ann Coulter...," Kaufmann beseeches Coulter, picking up on her comment that Jews need to be "perfected"...

I'd say Kaufmann, judging by her talent as a writer, singer, and now a performer, is already there.

And BarelyPolitical.com continues in its work as the best new-media satire operation around.

See also:

Obama Girl Applauded in my Class at Fordham


and The Barely Political Revolution

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Interview with Obama Girl Producer Ben Relles

It's Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year, 5768 - and, in addition to wishing everyone a Happy New Year, with lots of honey, how's this for a segue -

Another video response to "Crush On Obama Girl" - Rosh Hashanah Girl - went up on YouTube two weeks ago. It's good, and funny, and already has more than 200,000 views...

Which goes to show how thoroughly Ben Relles' BarelyPolitical.com videos have already permeated our culture.

So, what better time to post the podcast interview I conducted with Ben Relles last week! We discuss how Ben and the team came up with the idea for Obama Girl ... how Amber Lee Ettinger came to be Obama Girl ... the role of songwriter singer Leah Kauffman ... Barack Obama and his family and campaign's reactions to the Obama Girl videos, and Ben's response to these reactions ... plus, placement of BarelyPolitical.com in the history and future of political satirical television and video...

You can listen to this on my Light On Light Through podcast page, or just click on the player below...







interview with Ben Relles


Ben RellesAmber Lee EttingerLeah Kauffman

see also The Barely Political Revolution ...

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Ben Relles - Obama Girl producer - Talked To My Class Tonight At Fordham

And Ben revealed some great nuggets - about how the Obama Girl videos came to be, and what we can expect in the future ...

1. The Obama Girl video (I've Got a Crush on Obama) began as "I've Got a Crush on Jack Bauer" ... but real politics hit Ben as the better way to go. I urged to him eventually do the Jack Bauer video anyway - I'm always looking out to help fans of 24...

2. Ben and his team scrutinized YouTube before embarking on the project - they discovered that, with all the attention the comedy skits get, the most popular videos were music. Hence the catchy songs in both the "I've Got a Crush on Obama" and "Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl" (Debate 08) videos.

3. Leah Kauffman wrote the first drafts of the lyrics. They were much hotter than what made it to YouTube (which are pretty hot, anyway ... "I want Giuliani on me...")

4. Ben also told the class what the next release will be in the Obama Girl series. In fact, we saw a rough cut of it. I'm sworn to secrecy - but stay tuned here for very first word of it.

5. Obama Girl (Amber Lee Ettinger) will also be appearing as an interviewer of some of the Democratic candidates in the YouTube/CNN debates last week. These are interviews with some of the real candidates that she conducted last week in South Carolina. My favorite bit: an interview with Dennis Kucinich, who appears ever briefly in "Debate 08" (Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl).

It's never been more fun being a professor, and teaching a course in Propaganda and Persuasion.

If Obama is elected President - or Vice President - or even gets the Democratic nomination for President or VP, Ben Relles and the impact he's having with the Obama Girl videos will deserve part of the credit for that.

See also

The Barely Political Revolution

and BarelyPolitcal.com Goes Meta!
InfiniteRegress.tv