Broadway stars and musical theatre performers got together to create the Obama re-election ad by turning Les Misérables’ “One Day More” into “One Term More.” The video attacks Romney, Rush Limbaugh, the GOP, misogyny, and many others while positioning Obama as a leader who has accomplished much and deserves “one term more” to finish the job.
The group has a website where you can read the lyrics (or sing along!) and their open letter, a rather poignant explanation for what’s in the video, and what motivated them to create it.
Don DeMesquita, who wrote the open letter and the lyrics, notes:
DO YOU HEAR THE PEOPLE SING?
To nearly everyone an RPM‘s a rev-per-minute. To me it’s a Rosa Parks Moment.
Her decision to remain seated in December ’55 moved me to stand up in 2012. Like so many over the intervening years, I’ve taken inspiration from an unflinching American icon who said, “Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.”
For me that seminal Moment occurred when Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke was viciously and repeatedly attacked on the air by a podium-pounding predator whose venomous remarks disgusted pretty much everyone within the sound of his voice. (I don’t know Ms. Fluke or her assailant.)
More to the point – that predator’s driving the Republican bus and arguably no less menacing than the one Ms. Parks encountered 57 years ago.
You’ll recall her busman summoned Montgomery police and had her arrested for refusing to give up what had been designated a “Colored Section” seat. (The bus was full; a white man wanted to sit down; the driver reflexively moved the Section sign from in front of Ms. Parks to behind her.)
Under the circumstances she hadn’t actually violated the law but was – as well we know – arrested anyway; and convicted.
Her tenacity ignited the modern civil rights movement. Fittingly, history was preserved as that Cleveland Avenue bus now famously resides in the Henry Ford Museum, an enduring testament to character and courage, to those who dared to dream a dream and undeniably to the audacity of hope.
While the GOP’s resident rabble-rouser routinely defames those with whom he disagrees, their party’s presumptive nominee hasn’t the character or courage to condemn such abusive behavior. Indeed, fomenting incivility and intolerance is grist for their ground game – and they’re doubling down.
If you’re not a moneyed Republican plutocrat with a name commonly mistaken for a mattress, soft drink or sundae, don’t own a ball club in Chicago
or casino in Macao or have an extra hundred-mil lying around, what do you do to make a difference? You stand up the only way you know how.
Who’s in the video?
Broadway and musical theatre performers Sean Smith, David Burnham, Kim Huber, Christina Saffran Ashford, Damon Kirsche, David Engel, Jennifer Shelton, Emma Ashford, Matthew Ashford, Ali B. Olmo, Johnny Pastor, Bubba Dean Rambo, William Martinez, Flora Rubenhold, Takako Gregg, Teri Yates, Mason Keane, and Paula Keane.
Hope you’ll share this!
Hat tip: Jennifer Vanasco