There’s a post title I thought I’d never write. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, posted a video of her cats on her official YouTube page and then promptly RickRolls viewers at the 37 second mark.
“In honor of the launch of http://YouTube.com/HouseHub, Speaker Pelosi presents a behind the scenes view of the Speaker’s Office in the US Capitol.”
This is the person who becomes President of the United States of America if the right two people go down.
I’m moving to Canada. Thanks for the tip Michael.
PS - Where’s the RIAA when you need them? Somebody somewhere owns the copyright on that song. I’d forgive all if they sued Pelosi.
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I think it’s great to see politicians keeping up with the ‘latest’ internet memes. Seriously though, I wouldn’t mind that for a second, she’s just having fun right?
Perhaps Arrington has been Rick Roll’d one too many times? It’s so 2008, anyway.
we’re so lost.
latest?
@Robin Wauters
I totally agree with you I would rather have someone atleast make the effort to understand even the smallest thing from the yunger generation up there in office.
Pelosi’s a selfish idiot. When Senator Snowe (R, yes, Republican, From Maine), moved to amend the stimulus bill to disallow bonuses to execs of corporations bailed out by the package, where was Ms. Pelosi in her opposition to the motion? How did that not pass (oh, yeah, Dem opposition), and now the Dems are in a roil over the bonuses that the Republican tried to rule out as she reached across the aisle and tried to act in a bipartisan manner and suppor the president?
This woman is an embarrassment to me and my state, and I wish she would just lose the last two brain cells she has left and go home to play with her puss (cat, you dirty minded bastards.).
Chill man. Be happy. At least your top political leaders (that’s be the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader of Australia) haven’t joined Twitter yet.
http://twitter.com/BarackObama
This is great, it makes me more secure knowing that at least one person in Congress has a sense of humor. And talk about viral - they got you to post about it.
which one has the sense of humor?
this is not great. this is f’d up.
The economy is f’d up. Gaza is f’d up. Iraq is f’d up. This is just a video trying to be funny.
Hi, this is Mr. Pole. Please remove me from Mike’s ass already.
Michael….you are getting too old to keep up with the times..you seriously can’t see the humor in nancy Pelosi posting this video?!!?!?!
and the Speaker of the House isn’t supposed to be thinking about ways to create viral videos. She’s supposed to be running our country.
Wouldn’t worry about it, it looks like the cats have got it under control. I would doubt she had anything to do with it, smells like a highly talented intern to me.
Running the country is the job of your president Obama.
yeah. like I said above, we’re so lost.
@Michael Arrington
I think you just regained my confidence.
Humor = human.
This is obviously a clever marketing tactic aimed at the YouTube community to raise awareness of the new HouseHub portal. For some reason, I have a feeling you won’t buy that argument.
@arrington
Geez, chill out, who says it was done with tax payer money? You can do that stuff at home you know. She probably has a dozen college student volunteers, maybe even family members in school working for her for all kinds of little stuff. Not every waking minute of public officials is tax payer time.
Too many people automatically see officials as corrupt, but they in fact have a lot of support and do good things.
Why not call her out on taking extra long lunches, business class flights, lack of prosecuting certain people of war crimes. Why not call her out for all the “wasted time” she spent trying to raise awareness for freedom of this stupid little country no one’s ever heard of called “Tibet.” Clearly her meetings with the Dalai Lama and appearances on documentaries about him were wasting our money too.
A youtube video that you have no background on is not worth the frustration.
C’mon…she has no clue about any of this. I’m sure it’s all a way to make her seem more human and “in touch” with her constituents. That’s the thing I hate most…it’s just a bunch of PR BS.
Hey Michael…you’re right, our political system is really lost and in need of an injection of common sense and a laserbeam-like focus.
Do you seriously think she had a staff meeting to tackle this? More likely some young staffer had the idea while in the toilet and implemented it by lunchtime.
And what’s the likelihood it increased the number of subscribers to her video feed? Are you pissed that politicians do direct mail too?
Don’t worry; don’t think Nancy herself is spending quality time on this stuff. Is a staffer or maybe her daughter, Christine (who blogs on HuffPost sometimes). But as most of us probably preach that you can’t understand any of this if you ever use it, I am one voter who applauds all electeds efforts (however lame) as better than not trying.
Anyway, it is a real rick roll if there is no user click? I think the kittehs got rolled.
Dollars-to-donuts it wasn’t Pelosi who put it up or thought of it so don’t get your panties wrapped around the axel about her wasting time on this. Some intern thought of it.
maybe they should be able to do more than one thing at a time!
LOL at MA worried about it. Hilarious!
For eight years, Bush has been interested in running the country, running the courts, running the Congress through signing statements, and running our bedrooms, our public peace of mind (”if you see something…say something…”), our schools, our houses of worship, and our economy — into the ground — God help us.
In practical terms, the likelihood is that some 20-something intern or teen-something page produced this on slave wages, if that makes you feel better.
But thank goodness she is thinking about something we can laugh about without choking on our own blood.
That said, I’ll lighten up if you do!
@pete
Just what we want in The Speaker Of The House, a sense of humor.
I lol’ed.
So the woman with the big plane also keeps cats in our capitol building?
what does that even matter. It has happened for years who cares if there are cats in there.
… or you can look at this as an indication that our politicians aren’t all archaic dinosaurs stuck in the past. If they can get into the Rick-Roll fad, perhaps they might be able to pick up another “fad”: being more open and transparent about how they conduct their lives and business.
you’re right. I give up. This isn’t retarded at all.
You mean like when Al Gore was dancing the Macarena?
I’m not interested in politicians goofing off to show that they’re regular joes. They can just be regular joes and do their job.
They have so many handlers these days anyway, you can never really know if they’re actually in touch with whatever it is you think is cool this week, or if one of their interns told them, hey, you should rickroll somebody.
Considering that you (plural) are their employers, and you’ve already given them carte blanche to raise their pay at their whim (and even when they don’t, they have a law in place that raises their pay automatically anyway), that you’d care a little more about the return on your investment.
I don’t see why everyone has to have an issue with them being regular joes. people say they don’t care but then the second they do something like a regular joe people get all butt hurt. Its said really.
Your probibly right some intern mentioned it and maybe even taped it, but apparently she seemed to enjoy it as she did end up posting it.
“transparent”, like she wants the SECOND half of the 1 trillion dollar bailout to nowhere to be?
It’s cool… I think we have 2 trill left before the money printer stops working!
It’s like none of you took a single economics course! Enjoy the inauguration, because there won’t be a dry eye in the country in 4 years.
Hmmm… is this at least a sign that she understands the concept of “fair use”?
This is definitely funny.. completely enjoyed it.
@Arrington - I’m sure she IS running our country - you don’t actually think that she personally came up with this and did work on it, do you? She has a big staff that comes up with this type of stuff and slaps her name on it. If she even has any idea what “rickroll” is, I’d be extremely impressed.
Nice move, it’s a targeted message. Only people knowing what rickrolling is, will discuss it. And feel some kind of personal bonding with her as she just stepped into their world of habits.
Ok, old habits.
every single one of you should have your right to vote revoked.
That’s the beauty of democracy. If you don’t enjoy it, there are a number of dictatorial countries that seem to fit you better.
1. The USA is not a democracy.
2. Freedom to leave is not freedom.
3. Aggression of any sort is abhorrent and to claim majority acceptance of such an act legitimizes it is sick.
and you sir, should know when you have made a mountain out of a mole hill.
this is some harmless fun, not crime of the century.
techcrunch does april fools jokes that look like real posts, its all done in jest, doesn’t make you any less of a serious tech blog - this doesn’t make her any less a serious politician.
our April Fools jokes are actually funny. Plus, we don’t lead the free world, control trillions in spending and manage the largest military establishment in the history of mankind. we’re a blog.
The comparision to techcrunch and the US government was a tenuious one to attempt to illustrate a point.
I know tht she is responisble for things far more important, but the point still stands. It’s a joke, and will hopefully lead to a few people listening to congress speak that wouldn’t have otherwise.
You’ve done a Steve Gilmore on this one fella.
On a slight tangent, please can you drop this ‘leader of the free world’ bullshit… nobody buys it. I’m not sure anyone ever did, and after the last eight years it just sounds like a very, very bad joke. Rather like this rickroll.
Seriously, though. Is this really worth getting worked up about? Have you seen the stupid Christmas message videos Bush & friends made each year? Surely far more reprehensible by your own criteria than these few minutes of nonsense.
This is just some intern having fun I would guess.
deep breath…tax dollars? tax pennies, perhaps.
We ask for our politicians to be more human and real every day, then the second they do we moan about them wasting our tax money.
We can’t have it both ways and I for one welcome a bit of humour. If it makes a few people listen a bit harder when she speaks next, then it was worth it.
Plus she wouldn’t have wasted barely anytime on this, some intern would have done all the work so not even a waste of money, as none would have been spent.
So we’re all idiots and you’re the only clever one?
Totally missing the point here mike. We have a sense of humour, we’re not thick. Youre having a serious case of needing a chill pill.
Oh, that was funny
We want our movie back.
Atleast the audio’s still there..
This is, presumably, a preamble to Harry Reid goatse’ing the chief justice during the inauguration.
Does anyone think she actually took the time to do this personally? If anything, one of her staffers had the idea, and asked if it was OK to post on youtube. Pelosi probably needed someone to explain the joke from 2 years ago to her, thought it was funny and said “sure, whatever.”
Bingo.
The economy is in the toilet and Nancy (or her hordes) have time for this kind of crap?
The Rick Roll thing is sort of done and its not that funny anymore really.
If it ever was.
My perspective: Quick thinking intern who just wanted to let the country know that Nancy is human, hip and understands technology.
Have you seen Nancy? I dont think this video is going to convince anyone of that lol.
She looks like one AK47 away from “getting a majority”.
I KID I KID.
But seriously, those eyes….
Michael, her job is not 24/7. Are you going to complain that she’s not doing her job when she goes to the grocery store, drops off the dry cleaning, or goes to sleep?
I’m no fan of Pelosi, but this is ridiculous — and the whole “elected leaders must do their duty 24/7″ seems to be a common misconception.
Seriously though, if she’s got enough time to post a youtube video, then *surely* she ought to have enough time to fix our entire frickin economy.
I mean jeez, next thing you know crogress(wo)men will be spending time with families, going to see movies occasionally, eating, and the list goes on and on. oh noez!!!!!!!
no. really. calm down.
I think its funny. But mainly because I don’t live in the US.
Michael you need to take a few deep breaths and remember that at least she didn’t go to War in Iraq for nothing more than thinking that your troops would like to spend a few years in a big sand bucket… yet.
Thank your god that you don’t live in the US, Ramzi. I have family in Iraq right now and I feel like kicking your ass!
Lighten up Francis.
I’m sure you ridiculed Stevens for his “tubes” and Bush for using “the Google on the Internets.” Be glad someone (or at least her staff) is aware of (somewhat) modern technology.
Besides - it is pretty funny.
Well, Mike, she got *your* attention (and link and traffic). Good for Nancy!
Great post
lol! Really funny post.
I like to see a politician with a sense of humor. It’s the ones without a sense of humor that scare me, the ones that don’t even seem human.
Is it funny? Sure.
But I sincerely doubt that either Pelosi or her staff was involved, largely because the Obama administration is currently known for extremely thorough vetting of potential staff to avoid scandal.
It does smack of PR & image rebranding consultants, and not the best use of tax dollars with the economy tanking, etc.
Anne, you: ” sincerely doubt that either Pelosi or her staff was involved, largely because the Obama administration is currently known for extremely thorough vetting of potential staff to avoid scandal. ”
Pardon me for saying so, but that is a very uneducated comment. Do you have any knowledge whatsoever of the difference between the powers of the Speaker of the House, and the Obama Administration?
You know, considering the repugnant things our government blows massive amounts of my money on, I have a hard time getting worked up about a RickRoll that took some aide a couple of hours and a $50 video camera to produce.
It’s retarded, sure, but pick your battles. This is really not worth getting riled up about, and it’s kind of funny in my opinion.
Sounds like you’re upset you got RickRolled…
+1
I for one can’t wait for the Obama vs. The Gotta Do the Cooking By The Book Remix…
Bullshit, Arrington isn’t moving to Canada.
Only because I’m sure he can’t forget how awesome Ottawa winters are I’m sure.
Only because he remembers how awesome Ottawa winters are I’m sure.
On the one hand, the video was extremely lame, and likely did waste taxpayer resources in some way.
On the other hand, I am pretty sure Nancy Pelosi had nothing to do with this except to utter these words: “What? OK.”
When asked for comment Pelosi was heard to say “Someone set us up the bomb”
Ridiculous to suggest that Speaker Pelosi personally made this. If anything she spent a few minutes hearing the idea and approving it.
Obviously the House hired a consultant to shoot what appears to be a professional video/edit job. As such, this is certainly accounted for in a publically-documented budget for establishing the House YouTube channel. Michael, you ought to be able to report on who made the video, and how much it cost, and perhaps even get a quote or two about why it was made. But that would be, um, journalism, and I guess this is just a blog.
Anyhow, I’ve seen a lot worse viral campaigns than this. What’s embarrassing is that viral video has become integral enough to our culture that the House of Representatives feels the need to participate. This video is a symptom of a disease that all of us spread. Talk about Idiocracy. Ow, my balls!
It’s not like she made this video herself, I’m sure it was some intern’s project of the Christmas break.
I’m sure no time was taken away from urgent Capitol work to create this little piece. It’s a joke, maybe not a great joke but just a joke.
Maybe she’s onto something….Perhaps Youtube celebrities and our elected officials should just swap places??
Astley could be Speaker of the House, Tay Zonday could take over for Harry Reid and we could plug the “Will It Blend” guy in as Senate minority leader. Filibusters would instantly be must see tv.
Well at least she is providing solid leadership in the house during these difficult times our country is facing…. oh wait.
Come on Lighten up everyone. If don’t like someone’s politics so be it but find better things to criticize than a silly video put up for fun.
They needed to upload something to test and advertise the House’s new Youtube blog.
Since people are talking about this, clearly it worked both as a test and as an advertisement.
Which makes Michael’s criticism incredibly stupid.
Be honest, Michael, you didn’t think this through very well. You just hate Pelosi.
Cheney would have to turn water into wine to impress me, so there’s no accounting for taste.
I like that she did this. Politicians and presidents are showing a new side since Obama won, and a lot of it has to do with the internet and open communication.
Just as so many people above have said, it’s nice to see a humor side, especially when it involves an internet joke! How cool is that? I think your own hubris may play a part in your not liking it.
Are you kidding me? Do any of you really think that old wind bag Pelosi did this? Guaranteed a hip young staffer is responsible.
So I came here on a link from another blog, and I’m confused - the name of the site is TechCrunch, but the author clearly thinks he’s writing for a conservative political blog.
Not only is he having an identity crisis; he flies off the handle in the comment section of his own post and proceeds to call his readers idiots.
Very coherent and professional. Maybe that’s why I’ve never really heard of this place before.
Take your Valium, Michael, or at least do some breathing exercises. Sorry your guy lost.
I got confused too-
As a Kiwi going to a ‘tech blog’ this is definitely what I want to read about.
lighten up
Anyone who ends a debate with an Idiocracy clip automatically wins. BTW is it just me or does anyone else think of that movie and feel a little guilty every time you watch a reality show.
In some ways this makes me like Pelosi a little more but Michael is right this is the blind leading the blind. The leaders of this country have completely disappointed us and we have no one to blame except ourselves. In an interesting interview this weekend Fareed Zakaria questioned the CEO of IBM Sam Palmisano about the state of American economic superiority. Sam compared America to a corporate conglomerate that isn’t nimble enough to compete with the new up and coming start-up governments and terrorist organizations around the world. While our industry has benefited immensely from the internet and the flattening of our world, our government has been left in the dust. We have failed to take advantage of enhanced communication to improve our economic position and global image.
I did not read all the comments on this one - not time.
My thoughts:
I do not care for Pelosi but I thought the video was funny.
OMG. they may be a little slow, but at least THEY GET IT. At least they don’t use “The Google” to cruise the internets.
If you’re worried about Pelosi’s video and want to move to Canada, check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FGIQpdtS_Y
Yes, Canadians do appreciate politicians with a sense of humour…
@MichaelArrington
You really need to chill out. The amount of unpaid people who work in DC is mindblowing, and one of them probably decided to use their time off to make this video.
Do you really think Pelosi spent more than a couple of minutes on this? She probably just watched it, approved it, and moved on. You seem to think that she was on the floor with the video camera, waiting for the cats to do their thing, then edited it herself on her computer, and then posted it herself on the YouTube page, all on taxpayer time.
Oh and by the way, it WORKED! Thousands of TechCrunch readers now know about the Pelosi and “HouseHub” YouTube pages. So you need to take a deep breath, read some ICanHasCheezburger, and remember that a crisis like the one the United States is in is no time to lose one’s head.
There are a few things I’d like to do with that gavel. Argh! Nancy Palosi needs to quit and be the spokerperson for some homo group…oh! She already is.
Rickrolling is now officially dead thanks to Pelosi and my tax dollars.