Viral Video of the Week: Racking up nearly five million views in less than a week, the stunt was a coup for the Democrats. But the Republicans smelled blood, and the opportunity to return to one of their more effective themes from the 2008 race: that Barack Obama, flanked by his fake Greek columns and teleprompters, is merely a stadium-filling celebrity -- and that does not a good president make.While the “Cool President” response from the American Crossroads Super PAC delivered a punch, it was actually not the first video response from the GOP. The first, entitled “A Tale of Two Leaders,” attempted, with far less flair, to cast the slow jam as ridiculous and inappropriate, offering the stern seriousness of presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney as the antidote. The video closes with an urge to Tweeters to use the hashtag #NotFunny to break the wave of presidential cool. How successful was it? While the term “slow am” was mentioned 18,662 times and “Jimmy Fallon” 29,699 times the day after the video’s release, #NotFunny racked up only 2,632 mentions, according to Topsy.com. Given that the two GOP response videos garnered less than 500,000 views between the two of them -- a tenth of the slow jam itself -- that may not be surprising. People are more likely to share entertaining antics than a finger-wagging killjoy.Even Romney understands that concept. Just a few weeks ago, the former Massachusetts governor when on the David Letterman show to (rather stiffly) deliver the top ten list: "Top Ten Things You Don't Know About Mitt Romney." All that might explain the President’s choice to double down on cool. With the economic recovery slowing, a nasty secret service scandal in the media spotlight and the largely undecided, who wouldn’t prefer highlighting their suave charm on the cover of Rolling Stone, or trading comedic barbs with Jimmy Kimmel at the annual White House correspondent’s dinner?With Newt Gingrich finally dropping out of the race, Ron Paul pushing 80, and Romney leading the GOP pack, Obama easily wins the cool competition. But cool, by itself, cannot win an election. On the other hand, uncool doesn’t really help either.
Tweet of the Week:
Romney aide calls Obama's "slow jam" humor inappropriate, says GOP candidate is huge prankster: wapo.st/IdJCBQ
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 29, 2012
#USelections2012 offers weekly insight into the US Presidential election through a social media lens, tracking candidates as they try to reach 270 electoral votes in 140 characters or less.
The writer is a Breaking News editor and blogger at The Jerusalem Post. Read his blog ‘The Bottom Line’ here.