The other night, just before she went to bed (only to be rudely awakened shortly after at 3 a.m.), Hillary Clinton spent the evening frantically voting for Adam Lambert on American Idol.* (What? That “Mad World” really spoke to her.) As she hit send on her eighteenth text message, she realized something: People will do anything — especially if it is something small and inexpensive like an SMS — for that show. If she was voting eighteen times, surely there were some orangutans out there who were voting twice that. And then she had an idea: That’s how she would settle her campaign debt! All this time she’d been looking for the perfect way to lure all those fickle supporters who vote with their heartstrings — the ones who surged to her defense when she cried, and who voted for Scott on AI because he’s blind but not, you know, particularly blind-looking. She could raffle off American Idol tickets!!
The next day, she instructed James Carville to call all the liberals in Hollywood and scare up some Idol tickets. Then the two of them thought of a couple of other prizes so tedious-seeming that no one would actually ever want them, and tossed them in so it wouldn’t seem like they were blatantly just using Fox to raise money. Then he sent out an e-mail to her entire database:
I knew it was going to take an extraordinary effort to help pay off Hillary Clinton’s campaign debt. But now, I think we can do it and have some fun at the same time! I won’t spend a lot of time trying to convince you to help Hillary. I know what she means to you, and I’m sure you know how important it is for her to have her campaign pay off all its obligations. So let’s get to the fun part — enter today to win one of three truly once in a lifetime opportunities and you will also be doing something great to help finish off Hillary’s debt. With a contribution today, one of these exclusive prizes could be yours:
• Spend a day with President Clinton. Head to New York City to attend several interesting events with President Clinton followed by your own special New York City weekend.
• Attend the American Idol season finale. You and a guest will watch live as the American Idol judges make their final comments and decisions on this year’s most anticipated season finale!
• Want to talk politics with me? How about a spending a weekend in DC. You will have lunch with me and my great friend Paul Begala. We will talk about politics, you will get to tour all the amazing sites DC has to offer and who knows what else could happen!
Make a $5 contribution today, and you could be on your way to one of these once in a lifetime opportunities!
…
Hillary and James went back and forth a little bit over how many times to say “available only for a limited time” and “once in a lifetime opportunities,” but then Hillary thought back to those orangutans pushing buttons, and figured if it worked for infomercials, it might as well work for her. The e-mails went out today.
*This is what we imagine happened.
