A Brazilian clown ran for Congress on a candidly absurd platform

Evidence

In one clip he is a plump, middle-aged man wearing a bright wig, a red hat, colorful trousers, and a bizarre graphic top. He spins around, grinning. He overpronounces and mispronounces his words. “I want to be a Congressman, to help the people that are most in need, especially my own family,” he says. “What does a Congressman do? In reality, I don’t know. But vote for me, and I’ll tell you.” And then he dropped his famous campaign slogan. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 178

Categorization

• CANDY: The Tiririca campaign and its slogan ‘vote for me and I’ll tell you what a congressman does’ is a genuinely funny, tweetable anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: A self-declared ignorant TV clown became Brazil’s most-voted congressional candidate ever — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 182; Brazilian voters used vote-for-a-clown jokes to signal disgust with politics — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 178; Brazilian voters turned a joke candidate into the country’s top vote-getter — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 182

Broader Connections

• A self-declared ignorant TV clown became Brazil’s most-voted congressional candidate ever #expands (0.97) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 182
• Brazilian voters turned a joke candidate into the country’s top vote-getter #expands (0.95) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 182
• Brazilian voters used vote-for-a-clown jokes to signal disgust with politics #expands (0.92) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 178