Mattera Goes Hunting For ‘Obama Zombies’

by Ben Shapiro

Jason Mattera is a smart guy.  More than that, he’s utterly unafraid of the left, a leading member of the new breed of conservative warriors who are not frightened by the Alinsky tactics of the Democrats and their allies.  You may remember him from his encounter with Charlie Rangel:

Or his undercover reporting at an ObamaCare rally:

Or his recent speech at CPAC, for which the New York Times labeled him a racist:

Now, Mattera has a new book, Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation.  It’s an exploration of just how the media, Hollywood, and liberal organizations like Rock the Vote helped turn young people into footsoldiers for a man they do not know and an ideology they do not fully understand.  And it’s done with the gloves off and the sarcasm ladeled on in heaping helpings.

The book covers the usual topics you’d expect – the media’s love for Obama (“During the primary, when on his campaign plane talking on his cell phone, Barack Obama caused a gaggle of female journalists to get funny feelings in their pants. And by funny, I don’t mean ha-ha funny.  While being filmed, in the background you hear these female journalists moaning and wetting themselves over B.H.O”), the ObamaCare outreach program (“In reality, Zombies have as much of a ‘right’ to health care as they do to taxpayer-funded trips to KFC to feast on a bucket of wings and biscuits”), and Obama’s Marxist background.

All that’s relatively old news, though it’s always great to get a refresher.  The real story of the book, though, is the Obama campaign’s incredible use of technology, television, and rhetoric to inflate a generation of apathetics into a generation of activists.

In Chapter Two, “Will You Be My (Facebook) Friend?” Mattera delves deep into the technological strategies employed by the Obama team.  If you want to know the story of the 2008 election, all you have to do is look at these statistics Mattera quotes:

  • Facebook friends on Election Day: Obama, 2,397,253; McCain, 622,860
  • Unique visitors to the campaign website for the week ending November 1: Obama, 4,851,069; McCain, 1,464,544

There’s a reason for that – Obama has all the best people.  Chris Hughes, the founder of Facebook, was on the Obama team.  So was Steve Jobs of Apple.  “In the end,” Mattera writes, “Obama’s Internet team consisted of ninety people …. Meanwhile, McCain was still fiddling with an abacus.”  The Obama campaign used text messaging and YouTube in new and inventive ways.  The McCain campaign came up with an online game called Pork Invaders.  Yes, Pork Invaders.

Mattera also goes after two targets who have escaped attention for two long, largely because the right has abandoned the culture war: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  These two jokers are ideologies in the disguise of comedians, and they use their comedy to shield themselves from criticism.  Mattera exposes them thoroughly, even as he criticizes conservatives for running from the cultural battle: “Even though conservatives bear the brunt of his jokes, I do find Stewart smart and sometimes entertaining.  Conservatives are generally slow on what’s in with pop culture, and that has to do with the fact that we’re more interested in ideas than iconography …. But Stewart’s tiresome years of unrequited cheap shots tailored to the under-thirty crowd are paying off.”  Colbert also comes in for criticism for his caricature of Bill O’Reilly: “By turning conservative ideas into satire and jokes, he and his merry band of eighty-six staffers have helped lobotomize a generation of Zombies who have written off the successful ideas of limited government and free markets.”

Mattera’s book is a valuable look into the next generation of voters, and what shapes them, and in its way, it’s a clarion call for conservatives to get with the technological and messaging program.  We can’t afford to use chisels on stone tablets while our opponents use sophisticated text messaging systems to make their followers feel loved.  We can’t afford to write off the glitz and glamour of television and celebrity because we’re “above it all.”  We’re not above it all – we’re in a war, and we have to use all available tactics and means of distribution to get our message out there.  Reading Mattera’s book would be a good way to start.


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Posted Mar 27th 2010 at 4:01 pm in Culture, Media Criticism, News, Obama | 201 Comments