This new video by Ryan Davis cracks me up, but Pach doesn’t think it’s funny and finds it kind of offensive. What follows is a back and forth Siskel and Ebert style discussion of the clip’s merits and drawbacks by your favorite 60ft. Theropod and 16th Century Inca General:

TRex: Okay, I’ll go first. I think that this clip is hilarious, although I understand that some people might find it offensive. To me, it’s a bunch of gay guys having some fun, whereas if the film had been made by, say, Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla, I would find it offensive.

Of course, I’ve run aground in the past on the fact that my sense of humor extends to things that some people may find off-limits.

Pach?

Pachacutec: I can see how it works on a number of levels. At the same time, the camp here is a little minstrel-like. I mean, five domestic partners? Talk about playing to stereotype. I think you can call out Rudy and do it playfully without reifying the James Dobson’s talking points.

TRex: But that’s what I think gives the clip its punch. It’s speaking directly to those people’s fears and that’s what makes it such a devastatingly effective political weapon against Giuliani. I know that the people who made it don’t think that this is the way all gay people are, and I’m not expecting those people to carry my message. I can carry my own message about what we’re like. Is this more offensive than Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall playing “Buddy Cole”? Aren’t we grown up enough to handle this kind of humor without taking it quite so personally?

Pachacutec: Well, let’s wait to see how effective it is. It certainly has potential and shows creativity. I merely contend that it could have dramatized the core point (Rudy loves teh gay) without propelling anti-gay propaganda in derivative form. It certainly could have been done. You could write that script, and I could too, though to the producers’ credit, they did something and we didn’t. The nuance that the implicit slander is meta-ironic will be lost on 99% of the people who see this. Messages matter.

TRex: I think you’re making the same mistake that the Dixie Chicks’ publicist made when they were shooting that controversial magazine cover. “I think you’re over-estimating the intelligence of the American public,” was her take.

I think you’re under-estimating people’s capacity to take in the irony of it. We live in a world full of Daily Show Democrats now. Politics is dumb, plodding, and boring. I kind of thought our job as bloggers and new media advocates was to shake things up. Don’t be such a pearl-clutching old lady. God.

Pach: I didn’t say it wasn’t funny. To me, it’s a great idea imperfectly executed. And those ain’t my pearls I’m grabbin’, here, sport!

TRex: Groan. I am rolling my eyes at you. So, how do you think this ad could have been done less offensively?

Pach: Off the top of my head, I might have actually written and delivered unironic text from a gay “thank you” perspective with serial drag queens dressed the way Rudy was in his most famous drag appearance, with the last bit referencing Rudy’s fabu outfit with a segue to him calling Donald Trump a “naughty, naughty boy,” or whatever he did in that skit. That, to me, would be the money shot, so to speak.

TRex: I guess I can see how that would be funny, but I don’t think it would be as brutally funny and effective as the ad the way it is. A lot of noise has been made over Ghouliani’s drag deal, but to me, it’s kind of played out. Even The Politico has run the Rudy-in-drag pictures by now, haven’t they?

I think drag queens have become Disneyfied in this country. We see them as sort of sexless moppets like in “To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything” or your average Hasty Pudding roast. I think Davis’s ad is a lot more fun and potentially explosive, and its unwillingness to play to inoffensiveness is what makes it so great.

I was talking with Chicago Dyke over the weekend about the portrayal of GLBT people in the media and how if we don’t own our own identity, even if it’s to make fun of ourselves, then someone else will. The “five domestic partners” line is the funniest one in the whole clip, but that’s the one that the most people will object to, of course.

I just get so sick of the typical liberal hand-wringing. Who are we to tell Ryan Davis what he can or can’t say in his film? If you disagree with the portrayal, then make your own commercial.

That’s kind of been my whole approach to blogging. People like Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile weren’t cutting it for me. I decided not to count on them to get my message out there (since that isn’t their job) and create my own platform. I don’t tell other people what to blog about or how to do it, and I would ask the same from them.

Okay, last word goes to you, Pach.

Pach: Well, I never said he should do it my way. Heh. I just responded when you asked what I thought. I guess I’m pretty much a simpleton on this: it’s funny, but could be funnier, cleaner, so as to hit a broader audience. In a message like this, you want the focus to be on your target, in this case, Rudy, and you want it to go viral with a lot of gay online support. Why make gay folks think twice about doing that? Is the point to have an impact or to make some other kind of statement about the boundaries of comedy? I guess it’s a matter of how broad a reach you want.

Thanks for hosting this little chat! Now I have to put away my pearl necklace.

TRex: Now we turn it over to you guys in the comments. What do you think? Funny or freakin’ awful?

You be the judge.

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