When I first saw the ads featuring this dweeb, I thought it was a fake Colbert ad and was waiting for Stephen to deliver the punch line. The punch line I got at the end wasn't what I was expecting--it was the GOP logo at the end. It was real.
The fabulous Reince Preibus is getting slammed all over the interwebs in his party's bizarre attempt to reach millennials with a series of stupid commercials featuring a fake hipster dude who can't seem to stop driving his Audi. Its so bad that even young republicans are doing a face palm over this. Note to Reince: If your ads are getting more dislikes than likes on Youtube at a 15:1 ratio, and you are getting snarky comments from supporters telling you its embarrassing, you are in danger of failing on a Karl Rovian scale.
We are first introduced to Scott Greenberg in an opening commercial featuring a representative of each demographic the GOP has insulted over the past few years (all except Muslims because, you know, fuck them I guess). Reince really and truly believes that the GOP's disgusting message of greed, xenophobia, and only helping those who don't need any help would resonate with people if ONLY their "messaging" was better. So what better way to get people voting for team GOP than paying actors from the various groups they are fucking over to read off GOP talking points.
That's how you get this crap-fest:
Look! A Hispanic guy who apparently doesn't mind GOP bigots making laws forcing him to produce his papers! A black woman who's primary worry is any cuts to the Pentagon's bloated budget! And by golly, that young Starbuck's employee is right. She SHOULD have a say in forcing you to bear child!
How could any of that NOT work?
Of course, out of the pandering colorwheel they picked the lone white guy in that bunch to focus on for their remaining multi-million dollar ad buy.
Scott Greenberg. The ultimate caricature of a "hipster": giant glasses, greased hair, drawn-on beard, and a child's t-shirt. He's real. He's not an actor. (Which is obvious since he can't memorize the lines for a freaking 30 second commercial.)
Here he is gasing up his Audi, (which ironically, was ranked the most unhipster car of the year), talking about imaginary regulations that are keeping billion-dollar corporations from hiring:
You see, there could be all these great jobs if only liberals weren't forbidding them to hire! Thanks Obama!
The fact that profitable companies aren't hiring because we allow them to write off paying their executives 475 times the salary of the average employee never enters this douche canoe's radar.
In the other ad where he supports fracking you can actually see cue cards switch in the reflection on his glasses. This one is my favorite because of his gratuitous use of the word "Whatever":
Oh man, I drive everywhere but can't afford gas. Thanks Obama! Fo shizzle...
We give the oil companies hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies, even though they have the highest profit margins in human history. Who thinks allowing them to drill in our national parks will suddenly make the gas prices lower? (The same guy who thinks large corporations will create more jobs if only they pay no taxes. The fact that the stock market is at an all-time high and we have no jobs should have shut these people up a long time ago.)
I had to know if this dude was for real. So I did my own checking and came across some interesting facts about Scott Greenberg:
In other words, Scott is a typical, hypocritical republican. Just in dorky clothes.
John Oliver's new show reshot both of Scott Greenberg's commercials and were much more effective in showcasing the GOP's positions:
Whatever you paid Scott Greenberg, Reince, it was an overpayment. Millennials think hipsters are pompous asses anyway, and you managed to find one that even fellow hipsters want to smack. Getting a smug, pampered youngster to read your soundbites was never going to work; but to be fair, no amount of marketing genius can fix your problem if the problem is you. In the words of one Millennial youtube commenter:
My American Dream is one where women have control of their own bodies, very narrow religious morality isn't legislated, consenting adults can marry whoever they want, minorities aren't constantly demonized either overtly or through dog-whistle code words, where greed at the expense of human life and dignity are punished rather than rewarded, where scientific consensus is understood and accepted and where everyone feels it is their civic duty to help their brothers and sisters rise to their level rather than stamp them down into the dirt to elevate themselves.
This is why I will never vote Republican. Your party is an unholy marriage between the remnants of the Moral Majority, the southern racists that joined your party after Nixon courted them and Gordon Gekko. No. Fucking. Thanks
Mon Mar 24, 2014 at 8:21 AM PT: This is Scott Greenberg's website for his marketing "firm". Gawker reported that his house "appears to be a fair distance from his one-man marketing firm's glass and steel office in DC's NoMa district". The address they have does match the website, but it doesn't appear to be an office building. It seems to be an apartment building.