Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry is as wholesome and American as they come. He believes in hard work, patriotism, faith in god, and good old American ingenuity, even if we have to import it from Canada.


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Rick Perry's first web video since joining the presidential race is mostly as generic a political ad as they come. There's something wrong in America, this man can fix it, here's some wholesome imagery of that man doing things that shouldn't piss anyone off—it's a time-tested formula.


It's the sort of time-tested formula you can easily fuck up by trying to go too high tech. In this brief clip from the political ad we see Rick looking over the shoulder of what looks like an employee of BioWare (likely BioWare Austin, the studio working on the massively multiplayer Star Wars: The Old Republic), the development arm of video game giant Electronic Arts (EA) responsible for creating epic fantasy role-playing titles. He points to an image from the company's top-selling video game franchise, Mass Effect. He waves his hand, as if giving the person at the keyboard direction.

As he does this the voice over talks about Perry "unleashing the power of American ingenuity and innovation." The words are strong, the images resonate with me as a part of the ever-growing geek culture.

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Unfortunately, as part of that geek culture, I'm also aware that the branch of BioWare responsible for the Mass Effect franchise is based in Canada, headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. Suddenly the message loses some of its power. I mean sure, BioWare parent EA is a U.S. company, but one that maintains studios in Canada largely due to tax incentives and a strong pool of rising game development talent in the area.

American ingenuity: Employing Canadians for over a decade.

At least Perry picked a better video game franchise than fellow Republican candidate Herman Cain. We need a president that's ready to select the right moral choices from the in-game dialog tree.