Watching Big Sister | Campaign spots get special treatment on Web

WATCHING BIG SISTER
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Jose Antonio Vargas and Howard Kurtz]
It's the first viral attack ad of the 2008 presidential campaign: a clever idea, visually arresting images, the sound of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's voice and, all too fittingly in this YouTube age, an anonymous filmmaker. The 74-second spot has been viewed more than a million times online, making it far more popular than any of the official videos posted by the presidential contenders. It's a "mash-up" of Ridley Scott's 1984 Super Bowl commercial that portrayed IBM as an Orwellian Big Brother and introduced Apple's Macintosh as the bright new vanguard of computing. But now it's Big Sister, Clinton, vs. the upstart, Sen. Barack Obama. Interspersed with speeches from videos on Clinton's official site, the clip shows a horde of ghostlike followers droning on. It closes with an altered Apple symbol -- the Apple's now an O -- and the Web address BarackObama.com. And just as the young blond athletic woman in the video causes a massive explosion by hurling a sledgehammer at a giant screen with Clinton's image, this ad's reach blows up any notion that candidates and mainstream media outlets can control the campaign dialogue. Especially online.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR200703...
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* Campaign spots get special treatment on Web
As hundreds of thousands of people view a brief, provocative video clip on the Internet slamming Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's run for the presidency, federal election law suggests that whoever paid for, produced and posted the spot might never be known. The reason: The Federal Election Commission last year issued regulations leaving Internet political communications all but unfettered.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-hillary21mar21,1...