Enquirer’s Politics Extra blog:
Matthew King, a 17-year-old Lakota East High school senior, recently created a Youtube Video highlighting two small towns in America, that just so happened to be named Romney and Barrackville.
King visited Romney and Barrackville, West Virgina, 100 miles away from each other, to get a sense of what the people living in the presidential pun towns thought of the election, and living in a town with names like the President and presidential candidate.
In the video, King talks to people on the street, through car windows, and people putting groceries in their cars about their views on the towns name, asking questions with only slight political implications. King asked one man what Romney was like,
“Romney is pretty much just a small town, small community, everybody knows everybody. We all get along, it’s pretty neighborly, everybody tries to help everybody out as much as possible,” one man said.
“So you help like the 47% of Americans that need the help that they can get, right?” asked King.
“Absolutely,” replied the young man.
King, a member of Americans for Prosperity and the former chairman of the Butler County Teenage Republicans said he created the video to do his part. “I’m very actively involved in politics, but I can’t vote this election. I asked myself, what can I do to get people involved?” King was influenced by Jon Stewart. “It’s funny, but the Daily Show is some peoples’ news,” said King.
King stumbled upon Romney and Barrackville after looking up whether a deceased relative was still registered to vote or not. “I looked up my great grandmother, and she wasn’t still registered, but there was someone named Anne and it said she lived in Romney. Then we saw Barrackville. I was like oh no way!” King said. King packed up a film crew and his family and headed to West Virginia.
“Up there I was asking questions to be humorous, but people didn’t want it to be funny. When I was done asking them questions they would say ‘its nice you’re doing this, but it’s a serious issue,” King said. “I’ve been involved in politics for a long time, but this time it was different, there was something deeper in the conversation,” King said.
King admitted there was a bit of a bias in the way he represented the towns, leaning in support of Romney.
King hopes to go into a political field or entertainment management after graduation, “but there’s not a big difference between entertainment and politics,” King laughed. King has already begun to work toward those goals. He founded Lakota T.V., a district television channel. “That will be there after I graduate, as a way for student to get their voice out there,” said King.
This also isn’t King’s first video. Four years ago he shared a home video called “Wii for Christmas” on Youtube, featuring himself, which has over 200,00 views.
