Kansas Cowboy Plagiarizes John Cornyn's Famous Big John Ad
Imitation is the highest form of flattery?
A Republican running for Congress in an open seat in Kansas is out with an ad so filled with plagiarism that even President Joe Biden would blush.
In his congressional campaign, Shawn Tiffany is leaning heavily on being a cowboy and an outsider. To that end, he even rolled out a very clever ad, called Big Shawn, that features a Sam Elliott-sounding narrator praising him in a rolling western accent.
“He’ll push ‘em hard, and with our vote, build a wall, make it taller – hell, he’ll build a moat, keep our families free,” the narrator claims, as chants of “big Shawn” echo in the background.
There’s one significant problem, however. Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) did the exact same thing with his legendary Big John ad from his 2008 campaign. Tiffany’s ad is a cheap copy of the Cornyn ad, which stands the test of time.
Both ads, of course, pale in comparison to the original Big Bad John, a country single by Jimmy Dean from 1961.
While Cornyn’s ad caused quite a stir 16 years ago – and entered political history – Tiffany should take heed from what happened to the original Big John in the song.
He died in a mining accident, saving everyone else in the process. “20 men scrambled from a would-be grave,” Dean famously sang over 60 years ago. “as smoke and gas belched out of that mine Everybody knew it was the end of the line for Big John.”
Tiffany is a heavy underdog in this summer’s primary, which most observers expect to be won by Derek Schmidt, the state’s former attorney general.