South of Your Comfort Zone

In my long, drawn out explanations of the Brasilian elections I have eluded to a “Political Hour” on Brasilian TV. For those of you who have been bored by these posts, check this out anyway. It’s fascinating.

Quickly, there are two hours during the day, one at the Brasilian lunchtime and one at dinner time, where all of the television stations get taken over by political ads. For the most part the presidential, senate and governor candidates waste little time putting ads here so it’s a free for all for all of the hundreds of candidates for the lower house of congress. One after another after another candidates spend 15 to 20 seconds trying to set themselves apart from the crowd. Not an easy task to tell you the truth. I have watched this hour of television various times and only a couple stick out in my head and they’re not really the kind of people you would want to vote for. The video below gives you a good idea of what I’m talking about. Some are former soccer players, one’s a son of a famous TV personality, some are acting crazy, and the rest are just weird.

Keep watching at least long enough to see the clown. His name is Tiririca and he is known far and wide and if he doesn’t watch out, he might just get himself elected. My favorite line of his in this video is, “What is it that a Federal Deputy (representative) does? Truthfully, I don’t know, but vote for me and I will let you know.”

If at some point in time you say outloud, “Wow, that person is creepy,” don’t worry, the Brasilian public is with you.