Obama Hipster Douchebags
Excerpt from a recent blog by Iowahawk, too good not to pass on: (thanks to my pal David over at Artful Articulations for passing this on)
Obama Pix Hipster Prix to Reclick with Stix Hix
At first, the Obama team looked into major media buys in key battleground states. But with a campaign budget already strained by price increases in arugula and Hawaiian airfare, the impact was deemed to be minimal. Instead, they turned to a key campaign asset — a dedicated cadre of young urban hipster douchebags willing to take Obama’s message of change to America’s small town streets and rural blacktops. An intensive eVite recruitment campaign on websites like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post yielded over 1,500 volunteers for the potentially dangerous mission.
“I couldn’t be prouder of all of you wonderful young indy rock assholes,” said Axlerod at a swearing-in ceremony at the campaign’s official training center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “You represent our party’s finest, the best of best — you are our Douchebag Delta Force.”
Highly motivated, and with skills ranging from post-modern gender theory to espresso cafe blackboard chalk art, the volunteers were eager to get to work on the campaign trail. But before deployment Obama officials insisted that all recruits undergo an intensive training regimen to prepare them for the rigors of life in Red Country.
“A lot of the plebe douchebags come in here full of swagger, thinking all it takes is a few hours of FM country music endurance training, and I have to tell them they have no idea what they’re up against,” says Ethan Dodge, a Seattle conceptual theater set designer and veteran douchebag of Obama’s Iowa caucus campaign. “Believe me, I’ve been to Dubuque. I know.”
To toughen up the recruits for the task ahead, Dodge and other drill instructors take a direct approach.
“We tell them straight up: we aren’t your mommy or daddy or your au pair. There aren’t any independent lesbian film festivals in Youngstown, and just because Iowa has a lot of farmers it doesn’t mean they are going to see a lot of Sunday chill-out farmers’ markets,” says Voorhees. “After that shock wears off, we tell them about how the natives drink Pabst unironically.”
“Sure, it scares some recruits off,” admits Dodge. “But the ones who stay are much less likely to crack under the pressure of a two week isolation from American Apparel or Urban Outfitters.”
According to trainers, one of the toughest obstacles to building a cohesive field team is overcoming natural hipster douchebag one-upsmanship.
“Most douchebags take pride in being in on trends and bands before anyone else, and abandoning them before anyone else,” says David Forrester, a grant composer for an Austin non-profit community public radio art advocacy outreach agency who serves the training center chaplain. “When we tell them their conversion target is fat middle-aged western Wisconsin Wal-Mart moms, it creates an ethical dilemma in many of them. They have fears that the mission success conflicts with their own finely-tuned sense of douchebag exclusiveness and superiority.”
“I counsel them that they are serving Obama, and a greater hipness,” he explains. “Still, I admit some harbor thoughts of abandoning the campaign for edgier, more-out-there bands like Nader or Ron Paul.”
I’m sure the City of Denver is glad the convention is over. The repeated Third Stage Smug alerts must have really been affecting health.
What a BORE of a speech BTW.
