Bipartisan Rickroll

[Axxon]

I like the cut of these legislators jibs.

Chris Higgins
Oregon House Members Rickroll Colleagues
by Chris Higgins - April 13, 2011 - 12:34 PM

In Oregon, our House chamber is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. This 50/50 split has been the topic of some concern, as bipartisanship is now required to pass critical legislation. In a surprising (and delightfully nerdy) move, a bipartisan group of Oregon House members decided to Rickroll their colleagues, by embedding lyrics to the Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” into their floor speeches. Citizen volunteers helped videotape and edit the resulting rendition of the song, shown below. (Volunteers were enlisted so that the Rickroll would be budget-neutral. Lawmakers also actually passed the bills they were talking about in their speeches, so in theory the Rickroll didn’t affect legislative work.) The video has about 800,000 views at the moment.

It ain’t exactly Auto-Tune the News, but it’s fun:

I hereby challenge nerds of the world to auto-tune these lawmakers and lay in a backing track!

Read more about the Oregon House Rickroll from StatesmanJournal.com, including the delightful quote: “We do really work hard,” [Republican Vicki] Berger said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a little fun and say ‘ooh’ on the floor.”

[Young Drachma]

I read this article and saw the video the other day. Pretty awesome that they were all on board with it. Hilarious and well executed.

[britrock88]

Excellent.