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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Faux-Bono sings about Michelle Shepherd in the Northeast. Just googled her and came up with this press release from last summer from Bank of America.
"In her most previous role, Shepherd served as Group Management
executive in the bank's Card Services division, responsible for affinity and financial institution relationships. Shepherd has broad experience in a number of operating areas, including customer satisfaction, collections, credit and strategic planning. From 1994 to 1996, she was responsible for MBNA Europe's affinity business.
"Michelle brings great leadership and innovation skills to the banking center channel," McGee said. "Her key role in MBNA's groundbreaking work with affinity groups gives us a creative leader in the field with product and multi-channel experience."
I have actor/writer friends who put on shows for corporations all the time. Trust me, many are considerably more mawkish and silly than this one.
Knowing what I do about corporate culture in America these days (and trust me, I wish I didn't know ANY of it), this comes across as frighteningly authentic. Especially, as the above letter-writer notes, in the name-dropping section. Look at him smile after the first name he mentions (Bruce Hammonds), and what sounds like a quiet snicker of recognition from the audience. I think it's the real deal. Bruce Hammonds and Liam McGee also come up on a Google search as being BofA execs.
I've worked as a media guy at those kinds of corporate events. Looks about as real as it gets. Nobody does sad irony better than middle management.
I agree this is too cringe-inducingly real to be parody, but I hope we'll get the reprise someday soon from the good folks at Dunder Mifflin.
This is awesome and funny as hell. What I can't figure out is why the BofA employees weren't laughing...those bank people don't have much humor, do they?
Thanks for giving me yet another reason to despise both corporate America and U2. This is hillarious!
Boy, that must have taken quite some time to write and rehearse. Makes the time-tested tradition of giving your boss a blowjob seem downright honest and efficient.
Until recently, I worked in the card industry. This looks like the typical team-building event that management likes so well even as employees wonder why the have to go. I imagine it's particularly common at BofA since they gobble up so many other companies.
You've gotta admit the guy is good!
Love his sexy voice and he's hot with his bald headed self..but the song? I don't know...uhh, ick, blaak, pee-u. The whole thing is weird, phony, just like every other time the corporate world tries to be "hip."
If I worked for a company that engaged in this sort of nonsense, I'd have to seriously question the judgement of the management and I don't think I'd come up with a very positive opinion of that judgement. In fact, I think I'd be sending out resumes within a week or two afterward.
...it's official. Rock n' roll is dead.
Take it from a BofA employee, this is not a spoof - amazingly.
Though I do believe that the writers at "The Office" and "Office Space" are or were employeed at BofA and got their best ideas ideas there.
This was too painful for me to finish...
The worst music this side of American Idiot. Oh, My, Gawd. Nothing on Comedy Central can touch the purile, saccharin puke that is that lyric. Brain bleach: STAT!
That was hysterical. The whole time I was dying to see the audience's reaction. Imagine my shock when they all stood up an applauded rather than laughing hysterically. That, even more than the song itself, is a sad sad statement about corporate America!
As someone who recently escaped from BofA to, um, another huge bank, I can tell you absolutely that this is real. Also, this video has stirred memories of a BofA version to John Mellencamp's "Pink Houses" that I'd thought I'd excised from my brain forever. Thanks a lot, Video Dog.
Very funny! But the rhymes are terrible. It's like they weren't even trying. They rhymed "card" with "world", and "share it" with "standards".
I sat through a similar butchering of U2 by Nextel's unofficial corporate rock band, The Direct Connectors, at an annual Nextel Ra!Ra! event at the DC Armory...
Listening to a Nextelized version of "It's a beautiful day" really hurt pretty heavily... It only got worse when they played a version of "what I like about you" that sounded like "What I like about Boost!" or something equally horrifying...
I'm a middle-aged woman, feminist and the mother of a 22 yr old male. I was the oldest and only girl in a family of three kids. This looked like standard guy horseplay. It can be looked at it several ways, and I can see how some women would view it as sexist. Maybe it was, but I doubt it. Seriously, it looks like she was being treated as "one of the boys" and got "rewarded" for some sort of behavior...just like one of the men might have.
Like I told my kid when he was a 12 yr old baseball player feeling bad about tagging a girl out when she was running down the baseline and she started crying...she's not a girl, she's a baseball player. Is she a soldier and not a woman here?
Would an only male involved in "female" joking around and being treated as one of the girls evoke a cry of sexism? Probably not. Just ask the only man in my office if he felt demeaned being the only guy at a co-worker's baby shower and laughed the entire time at the good-natured ribbing he took and dished it back about all our giggling.
The video is a snippet in time and none of us know the context of the film in the events preceding and following it.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
