First, here's the ad. If you can stomach the faux comedic stylings of Senator Man-on-Dog, check it out for yourself.
And here's what Kelly says about it:
Put plainly, it looks like Mr. Santorum isn’t actually in the room with the snappy seniors and is more likely shuffling in front of a “green screen” with images of an incumbent-friendly hootenanny projected behind him.And:
I noticed the apparent anomalies the first time I saw the ad. So did the dozen or so others I asked to watch it, with the exception of a single viewer who noted the ad’s suspicious aspects but concluded it was not doctored. I’ve also received calls about the ad and had a laugh over it with the man (and woman) in the street.Kelly did get a denial from the campaign:
The overwhelming consensus: The ad is a fake.
“He’s there, definitely,” she said as she watched the clip on RickSantorum.com. “Absolutely, he was there.”Ok, then. That explains it all. This from the campaign that outright lied about a KDKA news piece. Considering it's blatant fakery in the past, can we take anything from them at face value?
The ad was shot in the Pittsburgh area, Ms. Davis said, with real people and with the senator in the room. There’s nothing phony about it, she said, stating flatly that the spot “was filmed the way it appears.”
Kelly does end on a musicological note:
The strongest reaction to the ad came from Times-Tribune Staff Writer and Unofficial Polish-American Ombudsman Dave “The Polish Piston” Falchek. Aside from the spacial oddities, Dave pointed out what he considered more glaring inconsistencies.I can just hear Charleton Heston's booming baritone on that last line. "Take your stinkin' paws off me, you damned dirty...banjo player!"
“No polka band would have a banjo,” he said, offering to put me in touch with “a panel of polka experts” who would set the record straight. Like just about anything he sees, reads or hears, Dave denounced the ad as an insult to his heritage and said Mr. Santorum was sure to “lose the Polish vote” come November.
“A banjo? Really?” he asked. “He doesn’t know my people.”
After checking the Wikipedia, I was surprised to learn that there are some polka bands that employ banjos and saxophones - Slovenian-style polka bands (not Polish polka bands). While this may let the Santorum camp off the hook on the banjo issue, take a closer look at the article at the Wikipedia.
Slovenian-style Polkas are also known as Cleveland-style Polkas.
In the heart of SteelerNation, whose brilliant idea was that?
All kidding aside, if the ad was shot in Pittsburgh and the band is a real polka band (of the Slovenian variety) then it shouldn't be that difficult to track down the band. Surely someone in the band would know whether Rick was there.
So far I know it was not:
- Joe "Grkmania" Grkman Polka Band. According to their website, they employ mostly accordians.
- It's not the Dick Tady Orchestra, either. The banjo player in Lil Ricky's ad doesn't much look like Tady's banjo-ist (banjo-er? C'mon, help me out a little here people).
Later on today, we'll tackle the text of the ad. It's complete bullshit, of course.
Rick Santorum - The Slovenian polka king of
5 comments:
I don't know if the ad is fake or not. But Chris Kelly's bosses on the editorial board of the paper have donated over $100,000 to Casey campaigns.
That alone is a violation of the most basic of journalistic standards. They compound their original ethics sin by refusing to run disclaimers relating to it's puffing of Casey.
Kelly knows this and he, like the other Casey supporters on that paper pretending to give objective coverage to this campaign, refuses to run the disclaimer in his own column.
Unlike every other private business in the country, the press has a special status under our constitution. The journalism profession honors their position under the first amendment by adhering to a rigourous code of ethics when it comes to separating themselves from the objects of their objective reporting -- politicians and campaigns.
The Scranton Times editorial board and owners join FOX News, Rupert Murdoch, and a handful of other media companies who give the finger to ethical journalists everywhere. They have consistently used their newspaper, under the guise of objective reporting, to promote Casey and run down his opponents.
If we are going to insist on honesty and fair play, we need to insist on it on both sides of the fence.
Wait...now I'm confused...you're saying that Li'l Ricky represents Cleveland. I thought he was a Senator from Virginia.
Honestly, it's so hard to keep up.
:-D
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I saw that ridiculous ad yesterday. I was kind of embarrassed for him. That's the best they could come up with?
When I 1st saw that ad, I swore that Brabender hadlost his mind and his touch.
Brainbender lost his touch some time ago, folks. He's been repeating the same commericals for years. This one, in fact, is strikingly similar to a spot he did for Gerlach last cycle, which had Jim mixed in with wedding guests.
It is a very creepy, weird and clumsy spot. It harkens from the "wouldn't it be funny if..." school of advertising. The problem for Brainbender is that he actually believes he's funny and clever...and apparently Rick nore anyone else was smart enough to see this piece of flotsam for what it was BEFORE they shot it.
As to whether it's green screen or not?
I think not, though I could be wrong. Number one, in one shot you do see a mezzanine of sorts above the dance floor, so the shot of Rick from that vantage point is likely real. At least it was doable.
Number two, I think he looks stiff and odd because, a) he is, and b) he was lit mostly with white light while the background has lots of colored light on it. This tricks you eye into thinking they are on separate planes.
But like I said, it could have been composited. Even the "star" woman at the end could have been part of the foreground plate....
One other note on Brainbender. If you think he has just recently "lost his touch," you are forgetting about the Taxi Cab and Primanti's ads he did for Mike Fisher!
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