Brazil's government uses official Twitter account to criticize comedian after satire
The Secretariat of Communication (Secom) of the Brazilian Presidency criticized the comedian Marcelo Adnet for a video in which the artist makes a parody related to President Jair Bolsonaro and a campaign launched by Secom to exalt the "Brazilian heroes". On the Presidency's institutional channel on Twitter, Secom wrote that "there are those who prefer to parody good and dismiss Brazilians".
On Thursday, Secom launched a campaign called "A heroic people" with the premise of extolling Brazilians who are "anonymous heroes" and also mentioning facts about "heroes of the past". The series featured acting performance by the government's culture secretary, Mário Frias. The next day, a video produced by comedian Marcelo Adnet mocked President Jair Bolsonaro's relations with figures such as lawyer Frederick Wassef and former aide to Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, Fabrício Queiroz (an old friend to the Bolsonsro family who has with ties with illegal paramilitary groups and is suspected of money embezzlement in Flavio's cabinet). In the same video, Adnet mocked the campaign starring Mário Frias.
Given this context, Secom made an eight-tweet thread to counter the humorist, including in the posts a photo of one of the scenes in the video made by Adnet.
"We made mistakes. We believed it would be possible to unite the whole country around good values and good examples. After all, no one is against kindness, love for your neighbour, sacrifice for innocents, right? Wrong! Unfortunately, there are those who prefer to parody good and make fun of Brazilians.", wrote the official channel of the Presidency in reference to the comedian.
In the posts, Secom argues that it planned the series with a view to extolling ordinary Brazilians like resident Francisco Erasmo, who died while helping a hostage free herself from her kidnapper in São Paulo, in September 2015. Secom highlights the participation of Mário Frias and emphasizes that everything was "homemade, without additional costs, only with the love and competence of dedicated servers."
"What is the point of arousing good feelings, speaking in defense of the people and things like that, but in practice despising real people, flesh and blood, who are examples for human beings?", said the official Presidency channel, adding:
"Fortunately, we are here talking about a tiny and despicable minority. Fortunately, most responded with love, emotion, and gratitude."
On Friday, the secretary of culture, Mário Frias, had also spoken out about the case in a post on his personal Instagram, calling Adnet "filthy creature", "crook", "loose", "no future", "clown", "idiot", "selfish", "weak", and "goofy", in addition to evoking his private life to exemplify his "lack of character".
The reaction, of course, became a joke among Brazilian comedians. Maurício Meirelles created the definition that ended up going viral on the internet, when he called the Bolsonaro government "the most whiny* government in the history of this country". Danilo Gentili used irony to question how much Secom had received to advertise for Adnet. And both Fabio Rabin and Gregório Duvivier (in a retweet from reporter Rafael Neves) remembered Adnet's recent participation in "Roda Viva", where Marcelo Tas suggested that only communist governments, such as China and Cuba, pursued comedians and repressed humor. Felipe Neto quoted the thread with a picture of Jair Bolsonaro with a comedian satarizingly in character as former president Dilma Rousseff while he was supposed to speak to the press.
*"Whiny" here translates "mimimi", but lost in translation is that it's an expression more often used by conservatives to mock progressives' reaction to comedy when it mocks marginalized demographics - thus Meirelles is using conservatives' term against them.
Sources (translated and combined by the blogger): x, x
