(Note: The bulk of this post originally ran on February 16, 2009.)
A year ago, our freshly-minted Leader of the Free World was already mired in his first political tussle (awwww!!!), trading barbs with Wall Street suits and the Liebermans they own over executive compensation limits. Capitalizing on lingering public hysteria over the Obama brand and society-advancing regime change, however, was a less laudable operation: Pepsi’s “Refresh Everything” ad campaign.
OK, fine. I know that corporations have piggybacked off war, disaster and political propaganda campaigns to turn a quick buck in the past, but Pepsi’s ad campaign (still ongoing) is positively analrapististic. For the uninitiated, watch this Pepsi flack try to keep a straight face while telling us about his employer’s desire to seize upon a “cultural movement” and “a spirit of optimisim” to quench our “thirst for positive change”…through mass quantities of refined corn syrup. He also implies that the Obama campaign ripped off the campaign, using as his crucial piece of evidence the fact that Pepsi is older than Barack.
In its ads, Pepsi tells us that “every generation refreshes the world.” Well, now…come to think of it, that’s absolutely true: The baby boomers refreshed our supply of potential soldiers, the beatniks refreshed American demand for berets, the hippies refreshed our appreciation for the First Amendment, Gen X refreshed the cocaine trade, Gen Y refreshed the flat-top, and the millenials refreshed our definition of “refresh.” Who doesn’t want to be a part of that? I’m in — toss me a Pepsi, Britney!
The more I study the Obama campaign, the more I begin to side with Pepsi: He clearly nicked original Pepsi catchphrases like “Yes You Can” and “Fo Sho!” (because, after all, black is now acceptable in Kansas!). His campaign logo looks eerily similar to that of Pepsi — a company that, again, is older than Obama. And the fact that Obama decided to become president just as Pepsi rolled out its “Change” campaign is too coincidental for comfort. Nope, my mind’s made up — Obama’s a thief. He’s from Illinois, home of Blagojevich and that other locked-up former governor and R. Kelly and Oprah, who once endorsed a memoir that wasn’t even true. It was fictional, which is Dutch for “sucked.”
So there it is — the truth in all its exhaustively-investigated, naked glory. Screw off, Obama. Get your own damn ad campaign. And give Enrique his mole back while you’re at it.
