This Won't Make a Lick of Sense if You Don't go to Cal...

EDIT: I originally was planning on posting the picture by itself, perhaps explaining it another day, but then I realized I'm not that mean. (If you're a Berkeley student, you can probably skip this unless you want to hear a political rant.)

Right now at UC Berkeley (and, I'm assuming, at a lot of campuses), we're having our Associated Student of the UC (or ASUC, conveniently rhyming with "they suck") elections, better known as "they worst period of the academic year."

During the upcoming weeks, practically no sidewalk in Berkeley will go unchalked. No moron will go without holding up a picket sign for someone he's never met, just so he can get a few bucks an hour. No flyer will miss the epic journey from printer to hand to hand to trash. And no Cal student, regardless of how much he loves or hates politics, will go without hearing the words "Student Action."

Student Action is a "political party," the campus equivalent of the Democrats or Republicans. Actually, make that the Democrats and Republicans. Because, you see, at Berkeley, one of democracy's cities on a hill, we essentially have a one-party system. And that party is Student Action.

If one were to look on Facebook right now, you'd see a disgustingly large number of people with this ad as their profile picture (consequently, it's the ad I'm parodying). But Student Action doesn't stop there. No, they love to flood the campus with flyers about how they've instated yet another gelato lounge on Sproul...while conveniently forgetting to mention the fact that to do so, they tore down a beloved arcade and multi-school community center (which didn't fill their pockets like the ice cream money does).

Student Action is a self-aggrandizing, self-glorifying, elitist club who claims to serve the students but time and time again has done projects - projects that no one asked for - which conveniently gave them a revenue source. And, like any political organization, it is not about a heaping helping of foul play.

And yet, year after year, the people in this party are voted into office without fail for the simple reason that the names of their candidates have been pounded into students again and again (along with the normal assortment of empty promises) through all heavy, high-priced advertising.

One word comes to mind when I think of this scenario (though, in fact, it's two words): "Political Machine." Basically, if you want to get elected, you pretty much have to be part of Student Action (or, at the very least, on their good side). Is Student Action the new Tammany? Thankfully, no. But, as far as campus politics go, it's pretty damn close. Here's their cycle of power:
1) Use expensive, ubiquitous advertising around campus, hammering knowledge of you into the poor, unsuspecting voter.
2) The voters choose you for the mere fact that yours was the only name they recognized on the ballot.
3) You're in! Hooray!
4) Hurry, start some projects that will make you and Student Action lots of revenue.
5) Harvest the green cash money.
6) Lather, rinse, repeat.

Needless to say, I'm not voting for them. Well, I'm not voting at all (I hate politics, after all), but if I was, I wouldn't vote for them. Hell, I even have an aquaintence/co-worker running for VP, and I would have no intention of voting for her. But don't you worry: she'll make it. I'm so confident of that, in fact, that I was thinking to myself today, "You know, you could have all evil monsters running, but as long as they were part of Student Action, they'd get voted in."

And thus, my little fake ad was born. And now all you non-Berkeleyans get it...or, at least, you should...