Kids don’t vote much and
politicians don’t like that. In an effort to persuade youngsters
that voting is cool and getting
your head ripped off by a roaring
shirtless man is not, the Parliament of Denmark yesterday launched
the most memorable youth vote campaign in memory. Unfortunately,
their sex-and-violence fueled cartoon was pulled in
under 24 hours.
The animation shows Voteman, a leather-clad hulk, participating
in an orgy at the moment that duty calls. He tosses off three women
fellating him and two others moaning, presumably just from being in
his presence. Voteman penetrates the blowholes of two BDSM dolphins
with his feet, rides to the European Union, and punches people into
the ballot box for the European Parliament election on May 25.
The one-minute adrenaline rush crams in a back-story:
As a young man, Voteman forgot to vote at a European Parliament
election. That taught him a painful lesson. No influence on climate
regulation, agricultural subsidies, chemicals in toys, and the
amount of cinnamon allowed in his cinnamon buns. Horrified by this,
he decided he would dedicate his life to making everybody vote.
“We are trying to inspire the very young to go out and vote. It
is important we get a higher turnout, especially among the young.
You have to use all sorts of methods,” said Morgen Lykketoft,
speaker of the Danish Parliament. “I think [Voteman is] rather
innocent. You can find much worse.”
According to Financial Times, “a social media storm
that had derided the sexist and violent nature of the video” caused
the parliament to remove the video from its Youtube account and
Lykketoft to backpedal on his endorsement.
The Voteman campaign is deliberately over-the-top, so it’s not
worth critiquing all aspects of its cheekiness, though the message
at its core is troublesome. The video is aware of the
ridiculousness of voting on and regulating everything. Yet, it
embraces the notion that all things,
down to dessert toppings, are within in the scope of
government fiddling and that the only legitimate form of expression
is one that validates the existence of this political authority to
keep regulating.
Despite the European Parliament nearly tripling the number of
member states since 1979, voter turnout has steadily
dropped from over 60 percent to 43 percent. Lykketoft and
others lament the political apathy of European youths, but is
disillusionment with a system that treats them like children and
barely represents them really a bad thing?
Here’s what you’ve been waiting for. It’s probably not safe for
work:
from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/1nKg7gq
via IFTTT