July 24, 2017 09:54 AM UTC

That Ridiculous "Trolls" Video, Though

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• by: Colorado Pols

The weekend’s main political event in Denver after a big week for local Republicans was the Western Conservative Summit, which played host to a large number of conservative politicos, interest groups, and individual activists–and featured a memorable disruption of Sen. Cory Gardner’s speech by disability-rights activists.

But what people are talking about most today is a video shot for Jeff Hunt of the WCS’ sponsoring organization Colorado Christian University, featuring a bevy of Colorado elected officials and Hunt dancing to the tune of Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling”–as featured (without a shred of irony) in the hit Dreamworks animated movie Trolls! Now the video hasn’t yet been taken down for copyright violations, so we assume the song was licensed? Either way, Denverite:

Described as the largest gathering of conservatives outside of Washington, D.C., the summit started Friday afternoon and continues through Sunday at the Colorado Convention Center. The video features Colorado Republicans dancing all over Denver, though some of them are closer to “dancing.”

They were at the State Capitol, the Convention Center, Little Man Ice Cream, Ace Eat Serve and apparently an Audi dealership — among other locations…

Using the song from Trolls is doubly ironic once you see what the internet did to this video within moments of its release. See–George Brauchler dancing a jig!

See–Rep. Ken Buck blow ’em away!

See–Jeff Hunt loving him some Audi R8. Call it the “prosperity Gospel?”

Sen. Cory Gardner and Hunt say, “it’s fun to stay at the W-C-S!” Except you’re on camera, so do it backwards! Crap, too late:

Cory Gardner, cool guy in the Corvette gets turned into:

Check out more examples at Denverite, or show us your own in comments.

And no matter how good it sounds in a staff meeting, don’t ever let this happen to you! The internet is a cruel, unforgiving place–where context has no obligation to exist at all. Until you’ve thought through not just how a video like this will be received, but how it will be used against you out of context…just don’t.

Every so often it’s necessary for the political class to relearn this lesson the hard way.