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Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Innocent people do not delay justice.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

So many bastards, so little time.

’Where will you hide, Roberts, the laws all being flat?’

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

I really should read my own blog.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

We are learning that “working class” means “white” for way too many people.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

In my day, never was longer.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Keep the Immigrants and deport the fascists!

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

You are here: Home / Politics / Republican Stupidity / At least it wasn’t a fake Jon Hamm

At least it wasn’t a fake Jon Hamm

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After watching that penguins movie that Morgan Freeman narrated, I found myself unable to stop saying “some will not survive” in my best Morgan Freeman voice (which isn’t that good). That makes this my favorite election story of the season. By any measure, it has to be best voice-over controversy since the Tom Waits Doritos case.

Here’s a fun last-minute scrap in Campaign 2010. B.J. Lawson, the Republican candidate against North Carolina Democratic Rep. David Price, ran a TV ad that featured a voiceover that sounded like Morgan Freeman. Then the campaign said it was Morgan Freeman — and then Morgan Freeman, who has in the past supported Democratic candidates such as President Obama, made it quite clear that it wasn’t him.

I pride myself on my ability to identify celebrity voice overs, and this definitely would have fooled me.

Reader Interactions

73Comments

  1. 1.

    shortstop

    The phrase “the Tom Waits Doritos case” is objectively funny.

    I think the third baseman and I heard another ad this MF voiceover did for another GOP candidate a couple of years ago. We were all, “Ha! This guy is supposed to sound like Morgan Freeman! As IF!” Or maybe it wasn’t the same guy. Maybe there’s a whole stable of right-wing MF impersonators.

  4. 4.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    God wouldn’t do a voice over, so they thought they would fake it and hope he wouldn’t notice?

  5. 5.

    liberal

    At least it wasn’t a fake Jon Hamm.

    Thank FSM. Last thing I need is for SWMBO to be turned on by political ads.

  6. 6.

    Martin

    If they’re willing to lie about who did the voice-over for their commercial, they’re willing to lie about anything.

  11. 11.

    El Cid

    They should have hired that SNL Obama imitator to talk about how much he loves Shari’a law and how he was going to use it to take over all private business and send your kids to madrassa.

  16. 16.

    RedKitten

    This doesn’t surprise me. This, and then John Boehner taking Johnny Cash’s name in vain (thank you, Roseanne Cash, for being awesome), and let’s not forget Palin’s unauthorized use of Heart’s “Barracuda”.

    So few famous people want to associate themselves with the Republican party. And it’s not like the Republicans would shirk at a little fraud anyway.

  18. 18.

    Spaghetti Lee

    Any tips on avoiding a nervous breakdown over the course of the day? It’s not even 1:30 here and I already can literally not concentrate on anything else.

  21. 21.

    MikeJ

    I like that text at the end of the ad. Where it talks about “More Freedom.” Which no, doesn’t *say* “Morgan Freeman”, but with as much attention as people tend to pay to on screen text could at least leave that impression.

  22. 22.

    beltane

    In spite of Ayn Rand’s theory to the contrary, most truly creative, productive people are not right-wingers. Creativity is not particularly related to greed (probably the opposite) and authoritarianism is toxic to the artistic soul. While there will always be some creative types drawn to right-wing movements, they tend to be inferior in both quantity and quality.

  23. 23.

    cleek

    Lawson v Price in my district. i can count the Price signs i’ve seen on one hand, but those Lawson signs are EVERYWHERE. like on every corner, at every intersection, in front of houses everywhere, in the middle of vacant lots and hiding under bridges. truly amazing.

    i was at a Halloween party a couple of weeks ago and there was a mom holding a little kid (1 year old, probably). she was dressed in conservative business attire, holding a clipboard and what looked like campaign literature. and this little kid was wearing a tiny suit, and holding a flag. he was covered with Lawson pins and stickers. because, of course: his first name was Lawson.

    haven’t seen a single political commercial this season. thank you, DVR!

  24. 24.

    Martin

    @EconWatcher: Well, bottom line is that we don’t vote on a generic ballot. We vote on a specific one. Let’s see what really happens here.

    And as for the gloating, remind them that we’re not fans at a football game – we’re participants in a government. If winning is all they care about, then they’re skirting their responsibility as citizens.

  25. 25.

    Culture of Truth

    As of January you can blame them and their party for every last thing wrong with this country.

    Why wait? According to every media outlet and GOP pol Obama has been President for 2 years

  28. 28.

    Senyordave

    @beltane

    Doesn’t matter, according to most Republicans we’re in the middle of Obama’s recession. And then there is Obama’s deficit. Definitely not a case of Bush taking a balanced budget and turning it into a budget with a $500 billion structural deficit. And the media won’t ever call them on it. Ever, ever,ever, ever.

    Econwatcher, I’ll sublet a room in your cave if Gallup’s correct. And just to further depress you, Gallup uses cell phone households.

    I want to go on record that as soon as the GOP guts HCR, I want a law passed that hospitals will be required to wheel all Emergency Room patients without insurance out into the parking lot so they can die in public. We’ll have death panels yet!

  29. 29.

    Violet

    @EconWatcher:

    Would one of you smart folks tell me why Gallup is wrong:

    Don’t know if they’ll be wrong this time, but they’re usually wrong. Is that any comfort?

    OT: Can I just say how much I DETEST Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC. She was interviewing Tom Daschle earlier talking about the results of the election, change in the WH staff, etc. and here’s what she said: “Who can go out on television and defend the President on all these talk shows and engage in the game?”

    Yeeeeessss….that’s right Andrea. What’s most important for the President and the country is who can go on TV, on cable talk shows specifically, and “engage in the game.”

    It really is all about them, isn’t it? Politics is a horse race to them, nothing more. To hell with the country. It’s most important to be on TV and “engage in the game.”

  30. 30.

    Mark S.

    I hope if he becomes Speaker, Boehner hires better speechwriters:

    Remember when Ronald Reagan was president? We had Bob Hope. We had Johnny Cash. Think about where we are today. We have got President Obama. But we have no hope and we have no cash.

    Cash’s daughter called him an asshat.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    My pets of balloon juice calendars just arrived.

    I know you want to see my guys, right?

    View the calendar on-line

    My black kitty, Little Bear, is in the center of the page. (july)

    My beloved Quiver, who I lost last December, is on the bed, surrounded with light, in the second row from the bottom (july)

    My striped kitty, Willow, is in the lower left hand corner. (sept)

    I purchased 7 for christmas gifts, and the calendars arrived in perfect condition… each calendar (with a sturdy cardboard piece behind the calendar) was individually shrink-wrapped. So the plastic didn’t warp the calendars, as someones happens with shrink-wrapped paper items. Yah!

  33. 33.

    gypsy howell

    As always, Republicans have figured out that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. And by the time they need to ask forgiveness, the damage has been done. All that remains in the minds of the teatard voters is “Huh, I guess Morgan Freeman endorsed this guy.”

    Let’s face it, lying about Morgan freeman is small potatoes for a republican.

  34. 34.

    Ross Hershberger

    They have to cheat. Who were they going to get? Imagine Victoria Jackson doing this voice over.

  36. 36.

    El Cid

    L. A. Times columnist Andrew Klavan makes the important point that the success of Toy Story 3 shows that the nation rejects Obama and his subversive anti-American policies. (H/T Crooked Timber’s commentators.)

    Last summer’s Pixar blockbuster — one of the best American films in a decade — was a similar rebuke, not perhaps to the Obama White House specifically but to its underlying ideas. The fact that the film was such an immense hit, earning back over half its estimated $200-million budget in a single weekend, should have served as a warning that Americans, though they might like the president personally, do not share his agenda…
    __
    …Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear promises the toys that they are entering a better societal model than the old-fashioned family, one that is free, especially, from the grief of ownership. “No owners means no heartbreak,” the bear says. “At Sunnyside, we own ourselves.” Maybe he should’ve thrown in something about redistributing wealth and taking over the means of production, but it’s a kid’s movie, so never mind.
    __
    Soon, however, the toys find out that the hope and change of Sunnyside are all illusion, a mask for a two-tiered system of high-living corrupt overseers and their abused underlings. “This isn’t a family,” one toy shouts. “It’s a prison!” Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bear, the exemplar of compassion, is a bitter tyrant. Big Baby, compassion’s coddled and perennial victim, is an overbearing monster. And Ken, with his wardrobe full of costumes from the 1960s and ’70s, is a vain, empty and unmanly tool of his evil masters…
    __
    …Which brings us back to the midterm election, which may also be the beginning of a narrow escape indeed — a narrow escape from a leftist culture that has sought for 40 years to people and shape our imaginations with Lots-o’-Huggin’ Bears, Big Babies and sissified men; an escape from race-baiters and gender warriors who have sought to take away our pride in our heroic cowboy past and replace it with a droning litany of our all-too-human sins; an escape from an intellectual and political elite who have attempted to destroy our Space Age optimism by selling us environmental hysteria, guilt and fear.

    Too bad Pixar couldn’t also sneak in a genie to represent liberals’ love of rampant Islamic terrorism and Shari’a law.

    Welcome to David Brooks’ sober, experienced, responsible, compromising new Republican majority.

  37. 37.

    Spaghetti Lee

    @El Cid:

    Man, they will just use anything won’t they? “I had bad diarrhea this morning. Obviously it’s a sign of voters wanting to expel the Democrats from Washington.”

  40. 40.

    eric

    @beltane: I can and you can, but ABC and CNN and FOX and the Post and the NYT, won’t….they will ALWAYS blame two parties when the dems are in the right. it is that simple. the GOP will feel no pain because the Dems failed to compromise. I wish it were otherwise; but no, this it shall ever be.

  41. 41.

    ThresherK

    @Martin: Amazed at the number of attendees in Indianapolis who were not wearing Colt blue. I counted approximately four. The replica jersey estimate was ~45%. How does that compare to other NFL stadia?

    we’re participants in a government. If winning is all they care about, then they’re skirting their responsibility as citizens

    All I can surmise about their belief system is that they’re akin to a sport fan who thinks wearing the winning jersey will get them a contract.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    Well, I’m not particularly anxious. Even if the Dems lose the House, it won’t change much so long as Dems hold the Senate. The House has been the driver of legislation for the past 15 months and there’s 2 years worth of legislation that’s passed the House waiting for the Senate to vote on. Dems will still be able to decide what comes up for a vote. The GOP will still shut down everything that they can, just as they have since Obama took office.

    The only real outcome here will be 2 years of completely pointless House investigations, and the wingnuts gloating about their victory, which I could care fuck-all about.

    Congress will screech to a complete halt. The House will almost certainly try and shut the government down, and it’ll be fun watching the GOP, trying to set the stage for 2012 fight with the nihilist Tea Partiers.

    A much worse scenario would be if Dems lost the Senate, which looks rather unlikely at the moment, but we’ll see at the end of the day.

  46. 46.

    EconWatcher

    El Cid:

    Well, having seen that movie twice with my three-year old, I have to admit, that’s kind of a clever spin.

    Yes, it’s twisted to project such adult agendas on a kids’ cartoon. But clever nonetheless. It actually kind of works.

  47. 47.

    eric

    @Martin: tell that to the climate scientists and others that will be called in front of GOP committees and be called liars and frauds. You are underestimating the degree to which it is win at all costs. They will try to destroy careers to end the climate change movement. It will be gross.

  48. 48.

    catclub

    @Martin:
    The only interest I will have in the new senate is whether they
    will revise the rules to limit or kill the filibuster.
    (Not to mention anonymous holds.)

    My vote is on the under – no change. Thank you Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman

  51. 51.

    Tom Q

    @Martin: You could say, the main difference (if the predicted outcome occurs) will be that it’s GOP legislation that dies in the Senate rather than Dem legislation.

  52. 52.

    Martin

    @ThresherK: To extend this point, Ezra has a good writeup of what really matters here:

    Republicans will probably win the House today. They might win the Senate, too. But either way, the brief moment in which Democrats not only controlled Congress, but held enough seats to do big things, is over. And it’ll end in defeat.
    __
    Actually, scratchthat. It’ll end in a few dozen politicians losing their jobs. But if you see the point of politics as actually getting things done, the last two years, for Democrats, have been a stunning, historic success. Whatever else you can say about the 111th Congress, it got things done.

    So, the GOP might win the House, but nothing will get done for 2 years. Government won’t get bigger, but neither will it get smaller. Obama isn’t going to sign legislation to undo all of the things that Dems passed these last 2 years. It’s all going to stand and voters are going to like it more and more. In 2 years time, they’ll feel like something got done, and Democrats, Obama in particular, will get most of the credit for it.

    For all of the Republican victories the last 80 years, the only headway they’ve ever gotten is on tax policy, and that’s been mixed. On social issues, they’ve failed on every single point. Sure, they manage to move the ball down the field a bit, but all they’ve ever done is delay the inevitable. Universal health care is going to arrive whether they like it or not, whether they control the House or not. DADT will be repealed, so will DOMA. They might stall it, but in the end they’ll fail. They always do on these issues.

  54. 54.

    beltane

    @eric: I don’t watch any of those networks and neither should anyone else. Life is too short to watch a bunch of rich, embalmed looking, intellectually challenged assholes speaking to their audience like they’re a bunch of retarded three year olds. TV news is painful on the eyes and grating on the ears. Every person who refuses to allow that freak show into their home represents a small victory for civilization itself.

  56. 56.

    asiangrrlMN

    I just voted. The place was busier than normal, but not as busy as during the historic 2008(TM) election. My neighborhood is usually Republican (by signage). During the 2008 silly season, I saw far more Democratic yard signs than Republican ones. This time, it was the other way around. Sigh.

  57. 57.

    cleek

    @Violet:

    What’s most important for the President and the country is who can go on TV, on cable talk shows specifically, and “engage in the game.”

    don’t know if it’s “more important” or not, but having strong advocates for the President in the media might have helped overcome the notions that Obama has raised taxes, or singlehandedly exploded the deficit, or death panels, or any of the other thousands of falsehoods that most people believe.

  58. 58.

    Tax Analyst

    @Mark S.:

    I hope if he becomes Speaker, Boehner hires better speechwriters:

    Remember when Ronald Reagan was president? We had Bob Hope. We had Johnny Cash. Think about where we are today. We have got President Obama. But we have no hope and we have no cash.

    Cash’s daughter called him an asshat.

    Much of that quote is a modified and lifted version of a verse from the Dixie Chicks “Long Time Gone”:

    “Now they sound tired, but they don’t sound Haggard
    They got money, but they don’t have Cash
    They got Junior, but they don’t have Hank
    I think, I think,I think the rest is
    a long time gone…”

    Gosh, even when they steal the Republicans have to steal from a non-affiliated source.

    Yes, I’m also glad that Roseanne Cash called the guy an asshat.

  59. 59.

    Martin

    @eric: Yep. It will be. And it’ll outrage the public too, because the GOP will go too far. When your policies are based on proselytizing and propaganda, you can’t help but step over the line. The war on science is not something the right is going to win. They’re fucking stupid to even attempt it.

    I don’t think they’ll destroy careers. Academic institutions have been through this before and they have long memories. They’ve stood up to this shit before and they will again. The international community will universally rally to their side.

    @Tom Q: Pretty much.

  61. 61.

    Len

    I don’t think it sounds like Mr. Freeman at all. I just went back and watched a tape of Morgan Freeman’s last appearance on Craig Ferguson’s show. The fellow narrating this ad does a good imitation, but there are definitely differences. I think I’d have to believe Mr. Freeman on this one.

  62. 62.

    Sly

    The VO has too much of a Southern drawl to be authentic Freeman, especially towards the end. I think his family moved out of the South when he was around nine, and young kids tend to lose their accent very fast.

    I don’t think many people would have noticed it, though. Still, they should have gotten this guy to do it.

  63. 63.

    Radon Chong

    FTA:

    The Lawson campaign said that they were “tricked” — that the ad company they contracted with promised them Morgan Freeman.

    Really? Did B.J. Lawson seriously think he was going to be able to get (and afford) Morgan Freeman? Ah, wingnuts…

  65. 65.

    gwangung

    Really? Did B.J. Lawson seriously think he was going to be able to get (and afford) Morgan Freeman?

    No, but he thinks his voters would. He’s not that stupid, but he’s counting on his voters being that stupid.

    And frankly, they really don’t care. He’s one of “them” and they don;t care how dishonest he is, as long as a “values” person.

  66. 66.

    Fwiffo

    Actually, there was a big voice-over snafu in North Carolina in 2008 also. Liz Dole ran an ad with an audio clip of Kay Hagan saying “there is no God”, except it was actually a voice actor impersonating Kay Hagan.

  68. 68.

    SlyFox

    @Loneoak:

    Yeah. Morgan Freeman’s voice has some soul in it. This one sounds too backwoods. Anyone could have told you that wasn’t him.

  69. 69.

    JD Rhoades

    @EconWatcher:

    Just the gloating from my wingnut relatives (ie, my entire family) is more than I can contemplate right now.

    Do what I’m going to do, starting tomorrow: smugly ask “so where are the jobs? Why is the deficit still so high? Hmmmmm? ”

    When they protest the Republicans aren’t even in office yet, or they inherited a huge problem from Obama, I’m going to accuse them of just making excuses.

    It’s the same shit they’ve been laying on me for two years. Payback’s a motherfucker.

  70. 70.

    gwangung

    Meh.

    My thought? If we get a butt kicking, we take it like adults.

    Then we turn around and work like hell to administer one back in two years.

  71. 71.

    Linda Featheringill

    There is a question that we haven’t discussed here.

    Can a democracy be hijacked by lies and money and control of the MSM?

    This election will probably answer that question.

    We [the Dems] have fought like hell and worked endlessly and gave as much actual money as we could and talked to as many people as possible. We have nothing else to give.

    Is an election merely a function of propaganda? Do deep pockets really control everything?

  72. 72.

    Stan of the Sawgrass

    @Linda Featheringill:
    Could be the extreme-fatigue-from-just-coming-off-a-design-job-for-the VeryVeryVery-Rich talkin’, but
    Yes.
    50% or more of the voting pop. “trusts” Fox New’s version of reality. Any real facts that might challenge this is “Liberal” and therefore false.

    I ran into this again and again at the job, from tradesmen— plumbers, painters, finish carpenters– who I’d always figured would at least look out for their own interests. My wife and partner told me about one of the tile installers who “knew all about the constitution,” and one of the contractor’s assistants was carefully reading “The Five-Thousand Year Leap”— a Beck Book Club rekkemendation.
    (I asked him if he agreed with the author that the Eisenhower administration was a front to establish Communist power in the US. Not this book, tho.)
    I could go on ( and did, but I deleted it), but I’m just depressed. An epic-level crook is tied with a competent Democrat for Governor here, and arguing about it with Reburbligulgs is like arguing with someone who’s using ‘Jabberwocky’ as a serious political document.

    I’m so, so weary. Does voting even matter to these people? Voting Democrat is -prima facea- voter fraud.

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