"Cut taxes" response

Steve Anderson, a research faculty member at the USC School of Cinema-Television and a teacher at the Annenberg Center, and - most recently - the creator of the Subservient President site, spoke to MarketingVOX this morning to answer a few questions about his spoof of the Burger King viral site Subservient Chicken. The spoof-of-the-spoof effort, originally an homage to Burger King, became over time a politically charged affair.

MV: Who else was responsible for the site?

SA: Bjorn Palmer, Alex Tarr, Caroline Bracco, and Ted Kupper. But the person who really deserves credit is my programmer, Jon Perry, who also plays the
President. If the site is interesting at all, it's thanks to his performance and coding.

MV: Is there a connection between the Subservient President site and MoveOn.org, or is the provided link just a case of personally supporting the group?

SA: Unfortunately, there is no direct connection between Subservient President and MoveOn - I'm just a fan of their work.

The site was originally going to be a direct homage to Burger King's Subservient Chicken, with the President doing all sorts of kinky things - the Chicken is actually much more perverse than most people seem to recognize, or maybe that's part of its fascination. In any case, while I was planning the project, photographs from Abu Ghraib began showing up all over the news media. And then I happened to see the video of Daniel Perl being beheaded over the internet and the whole idea of making a joke using video surveillance and domination imagery started to seem a lot less funny.

MV: Do you take requests?

SA: I am totally open to requests - at least for keywords to add - I'm sure
there are things we didn't think of. The only problem is that we can't add
actions to the database - we can only expand the index of commands.

MV: Could there be a Kerry equivalent, or would it just not be that funny?

SA: I don't have enough material yet for a Kerry version, but it's unfortunately probably just a matter of time!