Sarah Silverman's New Sales Pitch? Hilarious Blasphemy

Now That Obama's Been Elected, Comedian Turns Her Wit to Ending World Hunger

Posted by Bob Garfield on 10.19.09

Sarah Silverman's best joke is about the Holocaust. (Punchline: "Because 60 million would have been unforgivable.") Her second-best joke involves licking jelly from a famous-name appendage. ("Oh, my God. I've turned into my mother!") So let's just say Mother Teresa she's not.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to help.

Title: Sell the Vatican
Author: Sarah Silverman
stars

Whatever it is she's selling, we're definitely buying. (Ed. note: NSFW, and also not safe if you offend easily.)

A year ago, she wanted to help Barack Obama win Florida, a place heavily populated with elderly Jews who had been targeted with a whisper campaign about Obama's supposedly anti-Israel inclinations. So she produced a video called "The Great Schlep" for a lefty political action committee called the Jewish Council for Education & Research, asking Jews to visit Zadie and Bubbie in Florida to persuade them to be unafraid of Obama even though he is a young black male with a name like a suicide bomber.

The video was funny and transgressive -- a big hooked nose as the icon for Jewry, racial stereotypes about blacks -- in the typical Silverman way. It was also a viral hit. Oh, and Obama took Florida.

So, having helped elect a black president, Silverman is now video-tilting at an even more formidable windmill with a stupid and totally delicious idea.

This time around, there is no client. If this thing's an ad at all, it's for her and Hungry Man director Wayne McClammy, who squeeze eight minutes of funny into a three-minute bag. But whatever it is they're selling, we're definitely buying.

"You know, lately I've noticed a lot of really sad, really long commercials on TV with, like, grossy-sick emaciated people from all over the world, and it turns out they look that way because they don't have food. And I know what you're thinking, 'If you don't like it, Silverman, TiVo past it.' I DID. You still see them -- especially 'cause I have, like, a 48-inch plasma, high-def TV, so, like every devastating image is in, like, brilliant, crisp, vivid, like, it, like they're in my apartment, you know.

"So, 'How do I get these people out of my apartment?' basically. And I think I figured it out, you know. All I have to do is end world hunger. And then I'm like, 'OK, how are you gonna end world hunger?' And then it hit me: Sell the Vatican, feed the world."

The premise is irresistible partly because it's so logical, and partly because it's absurd. Nobody is going to sell the Vatican (which is probably under water on its mortgage anyway, thanks to a lot of non-Catholic bankers who know a thing or two about wretched excess, as the anti-Semitic mouth-breathers have been quick to point out in YouTube comments). But the premise of wealth distribution is certainly a conversation starter at a moment in history when religious conflict, economic extremism, globalism, climate change and aging populations force us to confront our core values again and again.

Sarah Silverman is not the first to raise the question of whether the church is anachronistic and perverse. What's kind of new is bargaining with the Pope over his $500 billion crib.

"Take a big chunk of that money, build a gorgeous condominium for you and all of your friends to live in. All the amenities: swimming pool, tennis court, water slide. And with the money left over, feed the whole fucking world!"

Anybody can have a harebrained, blasphemous idea. But (mocking) God is in the details, like Silverman's unbelievably profane and disrespectful deal-closer: "If you sell the Vatican, and you use that money and you use it to feed every single person on the planet, you will get c-ra-zy pussy. All the pussy."

It's horrible. It's rude. It's hilarious. Furthermore, she's on to something.

11 Comments

By Curvin | SaratogaSprings, NY October 19, 2009 02:20:22 pm:

It's a funny video, Bob, but it's also not advertising. Which your critiques are supposed to be about, right?

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By Rodney33 | FRISCO, TX October 19, 2009 10:07:49 pm:

Thanks Bob for providing a good demonstration and review of viral video, which given the current media landscape is a noble pursuit for any advertiser and blends nicely with your sentiments in the "Chaos Scenario."

Rodney Mason, CMO
www.moosylvania.com
www.twitter.com/rodmoose

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By heaveho | Iowa City, IA October 20, 2009 09:47:33 am:

Oh, come on "Curvin" lighten up! Is your life so literal all the time, some how I doubt it. You sound like you could use a good laugh. Plus, if the topic didn't interest you, STOP READING and move on!

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By PAULA | SOUTHOLD, NY October 20, 2009 06:11:51 pm:

totally random. nice job you have.

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By Curvin | SaratogaSprings, NY October 20, 2009 09:23:37 pm:

@heaveho...
I laugh all the time. I even laughed when I watched the Silverman video about selling the Vatican. (Not a bad idea, by the way.) I jabbed Bob in the ribs because I know he can take it. You don't have to defend him. He's a big boy.

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By gobaseki | Dallas, TX October 21, 2009 03:09:11 pm:

It's only blasphemy if you're dissin' God... NOT the Pope and his "helpers"!

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By timothy.cloonan | DAYTON, OH October 21, 2009 10:12:40 pm:

Bob

Last year you wrote a blog about the Phillies win and DIRECTV's loss...time to post that blog again...that is of course if the Phillies hold on tonight. All you need to do is just change the date by a year and you'll save yourself from getting carpal tunnel.

Yes friends...DIRECTV blew it again...find out how...I wrote a little piece I think you may enjoy.

http://tbird827.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/good-tv-better-tv-dont-look-for-it-from-directv/

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By James | Irvington, NY October 22, 2009 02:06:49 pm:

Bob,

I think it's perfectly appropriate for you to write about this viral video, because it represents
the kind of media tactic that marketing clients can use. However, as you point out, there was
no client in this case.

Sarah Silverman's video is successfully viral because it's hilarious in a way that almost no client would ever be - about a subject that no client would ever touch.

You rightly decry much of the creative excess and irrelevance celebrated at Cannes, but with this review, you are encouraging the same kind of irrelevance. I'm sure this video was fun to write about, but Sarah Silverman is a comedian, not a marketer. So, besides agreeing with her premise, Bob, what's your point?

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By chris | princeton, NJ October 22, 2009 03:09:42 pm:

kind of have to agree that Bob should not be reviewing this video.

the video is popular for its ridiculous and hilarious premise, and vulgar execution - and an approach corporate america would never risk taking on to promote their brand.

so if none of the reasons why this video is a viral hit can be translated to a realistic corporate "how to" or case study, then why bother reviewing it.

-sully
www.socialmediabook.net

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By Bob | Anytown October 23, 2009 03:26:46 pm:

Why bother reviewing it? Here are a couple of reasons:

1) Not all marketing is corporate, and not all products have barcodes. Sarah Silverman has been a pioneer in the marketing of ideas.

2) I've done 50 columns a year for 25 years. Is there no room in there -- especially in a rapidly, apocalyptically changing media word -- for something besides a 30-second TV commercial?

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By Robert A. B. | New York, NY October 23, 2009 09:55:23 pm:

"On to something." Once again I'm left wondering how a mediocrity, like Garfield, a man without an original idea, keeps his column.

The spot is retread Silverman, and not particularly funny. (Even for those of us who remember the book/movie THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN.) And, so, I suspect its viral effect will be zero. The spot's pure entertainment with no power of persuasion. So in this regard it's just another example of a self-regarding entertainer and her friends playing with media.

As a communication, I'm wondering what's being communicated? There's no product, good, service or serious recommendations here, just, Silverman, exploiting the global hunger in general and in Africa in particular, to do what? Play Silverman. The hunger bit as played by SOUTH PARK and others have had a lot more bite. And, although I'm not a Catholic, I find her riff on the Vatican, and by the extension, the Pope, not simply in bad taste, but totally lacking in imagination.

Now, if Silverman and her producer friends really had balls, she'd stage the "prank" a little differently. What she'd do is suggest the good Jews who worship (at least on the High Holidays) at Temple Emanuel on Fifth Avenue, and the congregation of Stephen Wise in Brentwood, sell their high-price real estate to raise money to feed the famished Africans, and for good measure suggest they'd throw in the Hillcrest Country Club, too. She could then ask the Tisch family to give up their fortune and in exchange they could put up a nice plaques everywhere in Africa, and Stephen A. Schwarzman could erect huge signs with his name prominently spelled out all over Ethiopia. And, if these good Jews did this, imagine the good will it would produce—the "pussy" as Silverman put's it, in this case—might just be the reverse of the growth of global anti-Semitism and the war on the state of Israel.

In closing, I suspect the spot won't be a viral hit. First, because there's nothing sincere about it, and second, because it only will appeal to people, such as Garfield, who has a Jones for Silverman. (Even if it just Silverman, doing what she's does in these instances, which is basically masturbate on camera, winking and saying to us all, see what a naughty girl I am—naughty but funny enough for a new sitcom.)

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