FOR RELEASE MARCH 18, 2005

Th-Th-Th-That’s Appalling, Folks!

If an advocacy group takes a satirical chainsaw to a powerful target on the internet, will anybody hear it?

BY Michael Cornfield

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Communications Department
202.419.4372
www.pewresearch.org

RECOMMENDED CITATION

Pew Research Center, March 2005, "Th-Th-Th-That’s Appalling, Folks!"

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Table of contents

Th-Th-Th-That’s Appalling, Folks!

If an advocacy group takes a satirical chainsaw to a powerful target on the internet, will anybody hear it?

If an advocacy group takes a satirical chainsaw to a powerful target on the internet, will anybody hear it?

That’s the question for political strategists raised by “The Drugs I Need,” a musical web video lampooning the Vioxx scandal and related outrages. The cartoon has been posted online by the Consumers’ Union in order to drum up support for a bill that would require drug companies to make public all the results of their clinical trials. The retro cartoon belongs to the same genre as “This Land,” last summer’s big hit by the Jibjab company –and JibJab has awarded its aesthetic progeny front and center home page publicity for the time being. But “This Land” asked people to laugh at politics and nothing more. “The Drugs I Need” is a call to action. If enough people respond, there will be more imitators.