We continue our long, hard slog today with Part IV of
The War of the Words: The Story of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, the historic five-part documentary series about those brave homefront conservatives who fought the battle of opinion during the war in Iraq. Thus far, we've seen them
beat the drums for war,
cheerlead the invasion, and
fume as everything gradually turned to shit. Now, in Part IV, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders face their greatest challenge yet: a presidential election.
Watch Part IV: "Democracy Threatens" (6:48)
Credit Where Credit Is Due:
TWOTW wouldn't be possible without the invaluable vocal contributions of a great bunch of folks, including a couple of professionals as well as a few talented amateurs.
Associate Producer Brendan Power—known as bpower around these parts—supplies a number of voices throughout the series, including Glenn Reynolds, John Hinderaker, and Robert Novak. Brendan has done the hard work of promoting the project and raising awareness of it around the Internt.
Andrew Sullivan, Jeff Goldstein, "Captain" Ed Morrissey, and a few others are brought to you by Turner Watson, whom you can hear every weekday morning on 98.9 The Bear, the number 1 rock station in Fort Wayne, Indiana—and who happens to be an old high school buddy of mine, who graciously agreed to donate his considerable talent to this project when I contacted him about it.
The two "historians" are performed by Sebastian Helm—yes, he's really German—and my good friend Cat Kenney, who acts and teaches drama in Cleveland, Ohio. Cat also steals the show as Ann Coulter. My sister, Vanessa Henry, appears as Kathryn Jean Lopez and Michelle Malkin. Corbett Cummins, whom I met through Craigslist when casting parts, does a lot of voices, including Jeff Jarvis, Adam Yoshida, and Steven Den Beste.
I perform four voices myself. The narrator is my attempt at a deep-voiced PBS announcer type, aided by a moderate decibel boost of the bass frequencies to create a more sonorous effect. Wingnut boy wonder Ben Shapiro is me with the "Chipmunks" vocal effect applied. James Lileks is very loosely based on a dimly-remembered performance by the actor James Whitmore. Jonah Goldberg is basically just my regular unprocessed voice. I'm not sure why I decided to go that way. Maybe because Jonah and I kinda look like each other:
Continuing business:
- I've also uploaded Part III to YouTube, joining Parts I and II. Part IV comes to YouTube in about a week.
- As more parts debut, more people are getting annoyed that they have to sit through the intro each time. Yes, it is annoying, but it serves a valuable purpose: the main clip downloads to your computer in the background as the intro plays, so you don't have to sit around waiting for it. I've implemented a "fast forward" button that will appear in the lower left corner during the intro as soon as the main clip has loaded sufficiently, so you can click it to bail out early and go directly to the feature presentation. The fast forward button has been added to all four parts, although part IV is pretty big and takes a while to load, so the button may never appear for you even on a moderately fast broadband connection.
Thanks for watching, recommend 'em if you got 'em, and check back here in one week for the finale.