NM Pop Politics

When Tim Russert and George Stephanopolous say it’s over for you, maybe it isn’t, but probably it is. However, when a video portraying you as Adolf Hitler in his bunker, losing his shit politically and emotionally, goes viral, how many more coffin nails are left?

Back in West Virginia, Bill Clinton waved his finger and told low-information voters that those in the media who are calling it over now had been against from the beginning. It’s true that Russert’s eyes have glowed since Iowa, but George? As Obama said at Def Political Jam: C’Mawn!

But, if we’re going to include YouTube under the umbrella of “media,” then, yeah, maybe we are underestimating the number of original Hillary Haters out there, like comedian James Adomian, writer of “Hillary’s Downfall.” For all its vulgarity, the video has received about 300,000 views–four times the circulation of West Virginia’s largest newspaper–in a week.

In an interview with SwingStateofMind.com, Adomian defends his five-year war on Hillary with his own der fuhrer-style fury.

Audio Clip: James Adomian goes beserk.

DM: I guess my first question for you is: Who the hell are you and how did you get so mean?
JA: Mean? I don’t think I’m mean. I’m a comedian. I make a living playing George Bush, I’m on Craig Ferguson and I’m in the Harold & Kumar movie. I do George Bush a lot and I do political satire in general and that’s what this piece is. I think it’s bold. I don’t think it’s mean. I think Hillary Clinton ran a terrible, awful, despicable campaign and you know, I think you have respond in kind if you’re going to make a worthwhile point about it. You really have to you know, take the brick back to her.

There’s that general rule of thumb that once Hitler and the Holocaust are injected into debate, the debate’s over.
Godwin’s Law. First of all, I didn’t mention anything about the holocaust. I didn’t accuse Hillary Clinton of any of Hitler’s crimes. We just took a dramatic interpretation of Hitler’s attitude and personality and pasted Hillary Clinton’s recent troubles over that. Godwin’s Law obviously is not like a law of physics or something, it’s a rhetorical axiom. If Christopher Hitchens compared someone to Hitler, that would apply to him. But I guess Christopher Hitchens isn’t much more of a serious commentator than I am. I’m a clown, I do crazy things. I’m not seriously saying that Hillary Clinton is comparable to Hitler. No sober or sane person would say that. What I am saying is there can be analogy made to her bunker mentality and in all likelihood the swearing behind the scenes that we saw in that movie.

What generated this concept?
It’s a viral phenomenon–a meme–where people take that clip from Downfall and change the subtitles to make it so Hitler lost his car, Hitler got banned from his X-box account, when Blu Ray beat out HD DVD. There’s been different versions of it. It’s always when some disaster happens to somebody, people will come along and make a spoof of that.

So it was just a matter of time until somebody did this for Hillary?
Well, um… I guess if you wanted to downplay my brilliance, then yeah, you could say that.

I watched yours first and then I watched SNL’s sketch from last week-
I didn’t see it.

You should check it out because it’s rather similar in tone. Is there is an itch that people are just furious to scratch with this sort of catharsis?
I think that particularly among young people, particularly among people who see through lies, Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been very offensive. I actually became a Democrat, I registered as a Democrat back in ‘03, partly because I liked Howard Dean but also specifically to prevent Hillary Clinton from getting the nomination. She’s the wing of the party that is power-hungry and craven. The fact that she can run as the anti-NAFTA candidate is such, such- It defies all standards of decency and honesty. How dare she!!! She’s gotten a free pass. Her whole campaign is full of lies and hatred. It was really cathartic to get all that out in my video.

[Gasping] I’m sorry… You’re cracking me up here.
Good! Good! That’s what I do!

What exactly does “cunts for eyes” mean?
I don’t think there’s any real meaning to that. I just sort of lost myself in coming up with just invective from the gut that would just make me laugh. Somewhere in there she says, “I will fuck you all in half.” That’s something i actually heard myself saying when i was driving. I was like, “Jesus Christ! They’re going to fuck as all in half!” I was like, “That’s funny, I gotta remember that.” Sometimes I swear creatively day-to-day and I try to write it down if it makes you laugh.

Did you have any idea it was going to be this popular in six days?
I have had popular videos before on YouTube. This seems to be doing even better than my Bush videos I guess. I’m glad people like it. My whole career for several years has been trying to make George Bush look evil, like a fool. You know, he’s not the only bad guy, so sometimes I’ll branch out. Oh, I’m sorry. What was the original question? I might’ve gotten off topic there.

By the very virtue of making a video based on a somewhat obscure German two-and-a-half hour film. Does that inherently make you an elitist?
No. I think when people try to define elitism by cultural signifiers, that’s incredibly stupid. No offense. Like when people say, Barack Obama, the arugula salad and all that stuff, people in the Howard Campaign sipping lattes liberal and all that. If you to want use an obscure German film against me, I think that’s really dumb political discourse. I don’t claim to belong to any upper class people of any kind. I’m actually constantly struggling for money, so that’d be a pretty crazy kind of elite if they’re broke all the time. I like movies and I try to watch good movies and I read the reviews in the newspaper and I’m not scared away by a foreign film. It’s a great movie, actually. I don’t think it’s elitist at all to enjoy good things, especially when you’re fighting against the powers that be as I am.

So, is it over?
It’s over.