Hell's Angel Urges Good Citizenship

VH1 airs PSA featuring Hell's Angel Sonny Barger, urging viewers to use their power and vote.

(PRWEB) October 26, 2004 -- Ex-felon Sonny Barger has lost his right to vote but believes everyone who can should turn out at the polls. His 30-second public service announcement airing on VH1 until the general elections counsels that "people should not complain if they don't participate."

The provocative video spot is one in a series of three called "Presidents of the United States," featuring presidents of idiosyncratic organizations and aimed at VH1's youthful audience in its Use Your Power campaign. Barger founded the Oakland Hell's Angels in the late 1950s, was its president for many years, and remains a highly visible and outspoken member of the infamous club.

NY Times television critic Virginia Heffernan observed that "the ads are spiked with charming incongruities," and offer "a good-faith counterpoint to other such ads that suggest American elections belong only to nice people and joiners." Barger has never tried to be politically correct, but he is intensely patriotic and emphatically states "I never thought freedom was cheap."

The PSA can also be viewed at Barger's web site sonnybarger.com and was produced by journalist Norman Green, twice nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and honored by the NAACP for "I Am Driving While Black," about racial profiling.

Barger's best selling autobiography, Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club, is being developed as a major motion picture by Fox with director Tony Scott.

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