Curator's Note
Barely Political's latest video, "Perfected" The Ann Coulter Song" brings ObamaGirl vocalist and lyricist Leah Kauffman in front of the camera for the first time as she performs a satirical "tribute" to the conservative pundit. Like Barely Political's other videos, "Perfected" uses the genre of the crush video to comment on political discourse; however, unlike most of their previous videos, "Perfected" seems to offer a fairly barbed critique of many of Coulter's more inflammatory comments, including her recent assertion that she "wants Jews to be perfected" by converting to Christianity. The video itself emulates the genre conventions of a pop-folk video (Kauffman singing in a recording studio or strumming an acoustic guitar in Times Square), with Kauffman's character asking Coulter to "perfect" her, while sampling many of Coulter's more repugnant comments. While "Perfected" may offer little specific insight into the role of cable news shows in tacitly supporting Coulter's rhetoric by continuing to book her as an interview, the video is quite effective in recognizing how political videos can circulate both on the web and on cable news shows. At the same time, the video risks, to some extent, bringing even more attention to Coulter, providing her with yet another reason to profess her hatred of all things "liberal." Finally, the Barely Political videos do take certain risks by essentially licensing the leering responses of cable news pundits such as Chris Matthews, "Perfected," in particular brings to the surface Coulter's offensive comments in an entertaining way.
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