After weeks of internal debate, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign staff has decided on the iconic image they plan to use in a guerilla marketing campaign: a ticking time bomb.
“It makes perfect sense,” said a senior campaign staff member. “Iraq is a ticking time bomb. Global warming is a ticking time bomb. The Bush Administration’s massive deficit spending is a ticking time bomb. Health care is a ticking time bomb. You name an issue and there’s a good chance it’s ticking away and getting ready to explode.”
Plans are tentative at the moment, but the campaign will likely use animated ticking devices that blanket cities and suburbs in the same manner that traditional cardboard posters have adorned utility poles in past elections.
And now, after a guerilla marketing campaign for a television cartoon network went awry last week in Boston and paralyzed the city for several hours, the Clintonites know who they want to head their ticking time bomb effort: Peter Berdovsky, 27. His waist-long dreadlocks caught the eye of Hillary herself as she watched television news reports about the Boston scare.
“Him! I want him. I love those dreadlocks,” Clinton shouted to staff members who were watching news reports with her. “As soon as he gets out of jail, sign him up.”
Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, 28, were hired to place small, mysterious lighted signs in odd places around Boston to create a “buzz” about a television program. Some of the devices attached to the underside of highway overpasses led to frightened calls to police during the morning rush hour. Soon, the city’s traffic was paralyzed by a terrorism scare.
Police arrested Berdovsky and Stevens in connection with planting the devices. During a “perp walk” for the media, the two cavorted about and treated their arrest as a joke.
When Clinton learned that some news reports were describing Berdovsky as a political refugee from the authoritarian government of Belarus, staff members said she was “thrilled” by the prospect of having him as her guerilla marketing guru.
“Let the world see that the United States, and particularly the Democratic party, embraces originality and diversity,” she was quoted as saying.