Basil Marceaux
About
Basil Marceaux is a Republican candidate for governor in Tennessee's 2010 election. His appearance on a Nashville Tennessee's NBC4 local news was uploaded to YouTube and quickly began to spread. In the video, Marceaux refers to himself as "Basil Marceaux Dot Com."
Visiting Basilmarceux.com reveals a number of gems:
VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE! (Except violating a citizen rights this would be a special punishment )
The primary election was held on August 5th, 2010. Basil Marceaux won over 3000 (.5%) of the day's votes, losing to Bill Haslam, the current mayor of Knoxville, TN.
After his loss, Basil told the Washington Post that he "set the Internet up so they would talk bad about me because it's the only way to get hits."
Spread
On July 21st, Basil's Youtube video was posted to knucklesunited.com
On July 27th, a Reddit thread entitled Hello, name is Basil Marceaux and I am runninf for Republican Governor of Tennessee made it to Reddit's front page.
July 30th, Asylum's Tommy Christopher posts Meet Basil Marceaux -- Most Awesomely Inarticulate Political Candidate Ever