And this one shows that they can do the short, funny viral video as well:
Today we're going to see Obama take over the airwaves for a 1/2 hour informercial, a testament to their fundraising muscle. But what the Obama campaign is doing OFF the air is really something to look at. These mini-docs now have a viewing audience for the first time in the history of Presidential campaigns. And they are solidly put together, with as much care and creativity as something that would air on TV. I don't know if these will be a part of tonight's program, but the off-air work ha been BETTER than the on-air commercial campaign, which has been unusually phlegmatic. To quote Christopher Beam:
It's a prime example of the Internet gap in 2008. Obama's people understand the Web—what works, what doesn't, and what's funny about it. They realize that you can take a popular YouTube clip (and a great moment of FAIL), add some silly Photoshopping, and make a better ad than a snoozy Fred Thompson pep talk. Now if only they'd BarackRoll McCain.
In addition to all the other advantages, there's a serious creativity gap between the two parties, and in this, the second YouTube election, that's going to be significant.
I hadn't heard about this Congressional candidate in Ohio, but he seems bound for George Allen-like levels of greatness:
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) today circulated a video of GOP House candidate Kirk Schuring, at a rally in Ashland, Ohio, saying "we might be shot at" if the rally had been held in the downtown area of nearby Canton.
Schuring was speaking at a John McCain rally, according to the DCCC.
"Where I come from, we could never have a rally like this in the center of Canton. If we did, we might be shot at," Schuring said. "But not in Ashland, and that's what makes you so great."
Really, can Republicans figure out that through the magic of "the YouTube" you're going to be held responsible for anything you say on the campaign trail?
But this is even funnier. James Inhofe makes a commercial touting his continued attention to the continent of Africa, and in the VO he includes... countries not in Africa.
There are countries like "Bosnia" and "Jordan" scrolling along on screen, too, but I think he's including non-African countries in the lists because they're lists of trips that included countries in Africa. That doesn't have anything to do with saying that Iraq is in Africa, sadly showing the geography skills of the average American. And I love the questioning "Jim Inhofe did this?" at the end of the ad, as if to say "that asshole cares about someone other than himself?"
I guess Drudge has now linked to video of Mickey Kantor allegedly referring to Indianans as "shit' and "worthless white niggers".
That is COMPLETELY not what Kantor says. This clip is from "The War Room" and they're looking at early exits from election day 1992. He's saying "those people are shitting," referring to George H.W. Bush's people, and then he says "How would you like to be working in the White House right now?"
Readers of this site know I'm an Obama supporter (and donor) who earlier today essentially wrote that I could never vote for Clinton after her pathetic pander on gas taxes. But this is flat wrong. And as an Obama supporter I value intellectual honesty. Taking down Democrats using half-truths and smears is unacceptable in any form and no matter the Democrat. The YouTube is anonymous and dubious, and I know that unintelligible words become crystal clear once you have writing beneath them. As an editor I do this for a living.
I know someone who knows RJ Cutler, one of the producers of The War Room. I'm going to try and get him to comment.
"He does not say that [n-word]. He does not say that," said Pennebaker, after viewing the clip.
He said the initial expletive [shit] referred to the anticipated reaction in the Bush White House to the fact that Ross Perot's polling numbers were holding strong.
"What he says is he’s surprised Perot’s numbers are holding," said Pennebaker in a brief phone interview. "He says they must be shi**ing in the White House."
To be clear, I don't think the clip was doctored, I just think that when you put subtitles over footage your mind fills in the blanks for what your ears can't hear.
I know you probably couldn't say this on the radio; I don't know about a radio website. But thought you might want to know that John McCain is a total hothead and fairly unstable, considering that this was a reaction to a pretty playful tweak from the woman who's financed his political career:
John McCain's temper is well documented. He's called opponents and colleagues "shitheads," "assholes" and in at least one case "a fucking jerk."
But a new book on the presumptive Republican nominee will air perhaps the most shocking angry exchange to date.
The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop. An advance copy of the book was obtained by RAW STORY.
Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.
Seems a little out of proportion, don't you think? Can you imagine a diplomatic session with this guy?
And while that was back in 1992, there's no indication that McCain's demeanor has softened. After all, this happened over the weekend - and there's probably tape of it:
Sen. John McCain threatened on Tuesday to cut short a speech to union leaders who booed his immigration views and later challenged his statements on organized labor and the Iraq war. “If you like, I will leave,” McCain told the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, pivoting briefly from the lectern. He returned to the microphone after the crowd quieted. . . . Later, the senator outlined his position on the Senate immigration debate, saying tougher border enforcement must be accompanied by guest-worker provisions that give illegal immigrants a legal path toward citizenship.
Murmurs from the crowd turned to booing. “Pay a decent wage!” one audience member shouted.
“I’ve heard that statement before,” McCain said before threatening to leave [...]
But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.
McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.
Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.
“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.
McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”
What's worse here, the "I'll turn this car around right now" attitude when challenged, or the questioning of the work ethic of BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION UNION MEMBERS, no strangers to difficult labor.
These tapes will get out, and in the cauldron of a political campaign, there's no doubt he'll blow up. And while the media, McCain's base would surely try and shield him from any negative fallout, in the YouTube age it'll be hard to conceal the truth. McCain is unstable and unfit to govern.
Jonathan Singer has a post up at MyDD rightly warning Democrats not to internalize Rovian attacks, such as his recent bait dangled before Dems and the consultant and pundit classes that they're weak on national security.
A day after announcing he will leave government Aug. 31, an unrepentant Karl Rove said Tuesday that Democrats are headed toward repeating Vietnam-era mistakes that gave Republicans the upper hand on national defense for 30 years.
"The Democrats have a problem with national security," the White House senior adviser said. "Too many Democratic leaders are opposing policies that will lead to America's success in the Middle East."
Singer's warning is true enough.
I mean to take issue only with one of the examples Singer cites: the Nancy Johnson attack ad from 2006.
Before we get to the ad, here's Singer's discussion of said ad:
During one of the panels I sat on at Yearly Kos (which you can watch on C-SPAN here in full or here in a shorter version), I talked about the importance of Democrats not being forced into a cowering position over national security as a result of attacks from the right. As an example, I pointed to an ad then-Republican Congresswoman Nancy Johnson ran against her Democratic challenger, Chris Murphy, alleging that as a result of Murphy's support for the rule of law America could be put in jeopardy. The whole thing took the look of the television show 24.
I'll first note that I've read many excited recitations of how this attack just didn't work this time throughout Left Blogistan. When I finally saw the ad, I was surprised that I'd watched the same piece that had been the subject of a half-dozen commentaries with the common theme: the "vote Democratic and die" message doesn't work even when dressed up like the thriller serial 24!
I have to disagree that this ad demonstrates what Singer thinks it does.
I believe the ad tried to use the formula of an ooga booga "they'll kill us in our beds!" ad. I just don't think it worked. (Nor was it much like 24.)
Here's my quick analysis of what doesn't work here:
1) Positive/Negative: it appears the creators wished to split the time between positive and negative messages. The problem with this approach is that it's difficult to transition between the two modes effectively in a thirty-second ad without creating a discordant jumble. Thus the wished-for contrast between the candidate (Johnson) and opponent (Murphy) collapses. Had the creators used a different narrator for different parts of the ad, or used stronger visual contrast between the two figures, it may have been much more effective.
A perfect illustration of the ad's weak contrast is the fact that Johnson appears in black and white (as does Murphy). A befuddling choice. We've all seen those attack ads featuring a cartoonishly distorted opponent; while crude, such ads typically at least sell contrast between "good" and "bad" characters.
2) Storytelling: many attack ads are brief character portraits. This ad presents a narrative about a situation: the dispute over the requirement to obtain warrants to wiretap terrorists. Thus Johnson and Murphy are each characters summoned to support the larger story of this issue. Johnson does X; Murphy does Y. (Boooo!) But the fact that we have to wait until the end of the ad until we are shown the negative outcome of the issue means we are in an emotional state of Pause, waiting for a resolution. Thus we withhold full emotional involvement until we see the consequences. Then the ad ends.
3) Conversion: In effective ads, there's a conversion moment towards the end designed to create a rush of desired emotion (positive or negative). Such activation is important in an ad's effectiveness, for our brains actually create neural pathways in forming memories differently based on the emotional context in which we experience moments. (If you've ever seen the movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, you've seen this idea roughly translated into fictional form. Those memories that are smuggled into the brain along with great emotional content - feelings of joy, dread, shame, etc. - are more durable.)
I didn't have a visceral reaction to this bland recitation of having to get a court order (ye gods!) when the creators could easily have manufactured a moment of anxiety or anger into something shocking and intolerable. I didn't feel that punch in the gut "NO!" that you need to feel in order for this ad to work.
Perhaps I'm in the minority here in terms of my reactions. But there are actually structural reasons that moment didn't have the salience it could have: the issue of the genre of its visual and auditory imagery.
In the world of "24," you have the constant rush-rush of an urgent thriller. And this ad was not the trailer to a thriller. It had the genre elements of a drama, even a procedural. In a way, the ad was paced too slowly (for a thriller) but too quickly (for a drama that aims to ratchet up a feeling of foreboding and dread).
It's not terribly easy to do this type of ad well. (See, for example, the failed Bush attempt from 2006 - "These Are the Stakes." It seemed to use all the same working parts as effective scare-tactic ads (and even used the same title as an LBJ ad), but somehow those parts didn't transcend the whole. While the whole didn't work, we shouldn't neglect to mention its use value - in inspiring parody, such as D-day's "These Are the Stingrays.")
Ads that try but fail to scare you carry a great risk in any age. But in the Age of Terror (Scares), a candidate runs the additional risk of causing resentment, as the Nancy Johnson ad apparently did. Imagine someone holding a flashlight under his face in a dark room, telling ghost stories to scare the kids; it all evaporates when someone walks into the room and switches on the light.
Rather than proving that ads attacking Democrats as unable to protect the nation don't work, I think this ad merely proves that bad versions don't work.
Even though Karl Rove has ridden off into the sunset (where he'll retire to his coffin until later), his tactics have lost none of their salience. What worked 30 years ago still works today.
Yes, Karl Rove is trying to sucker Democrats into a head-fake. But just because Democrats shouldn't flinch in anticipation, nor should they pretend the blow will never land.
Writing for the Guardian, Michael Tomasky limns Karl Rove's anti-achievements in his two areas of accomplishment: incompetence and duplicity. In the duplicity column, Tomasky charts Rove's Mayberry Machiavellian tactics from his well-documented days as head of the College Republicans:
On the duplicity front, the evidence is voluminous. It goes back to his days in the College Republicans, when he was running for national chairman of that organisation and at the same time conducting training seminars instructing campaign workers in techniques such as rooting through opponents' trash cans. This against his fellow Republicans.
But don't take it from me. Here's Rove himself, in memos to a Republican gubernatorial candidate in Texas who preceded Bush named Bill Clements: "The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack." And: "Anti-White [Clements' opponent] messages are more important than positive Clements messages. Attack. Attack. Attack."
Thus the whispering campaigns that always seemed to spring up. That Ann Richards, Bush's gubernatorial opponent in Texas, was a lesbian. That John McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. And the worst - that a Democratic state supreme court judge in Alabama who worked with troubled youths was a paedophile.
I don't believe we've seen the end of the "Democrats = weak" meme - nor do I think we ever will.
POSTSCRIPT: There is a good example of a conversion moment in Hillary Clinton's ad from last week, "Invisible," which I'll discuss in a later post.
Max Blumenthal does it again with his video Generation Chickenhawk, visiting the bathshit crazy College Republican convention and asking them why they aren't serving in this war they so passionately and fervently support. "I'm more career oriented than actually serving," is my favorite excuse. Because we all know that going to Iraq and putting a target on your back isn't a career move, so there's no point in doing it, right?
This video also features the now-iconic statement by Tom DeLay that if it weren't for the 40 million children killed by abortion over the past 30 years, we wouldn't need illegal immigrants. Right, tell that to your corporate buds who don't want to pay a fair wage for labor, ask them if they'd willingly stop importing people with no rights and no recourse to do the jobs they don't want Americans to do.
And who's the guy who goes on about how "everybody has had an inclination toward members of the same sex?" Is he just dying to come out or what?
These are the future leaders of the Republican Party, by the way. Unbelievable.
This insane staged video of Mitt Romney and his family "decidering" to make the run for President really has to be seen to be believed. As TBogg writes it was just coincidental that the camera crew happened to be in Utah right at the same time that Mitt was figuring out whether or not to run for President, and captured that human drama of him and the family weigning this heavy decision. Mm-hm.
But there's something else about the video that caught my eye, mainly because I have so experience in the matter. What seems like a lifetime ago, I worked at NFL Films, which does all the highlight reels for the National Football League. The NFL is militant about licensing any of their video. One it crosses a 3-day "fair use" window, any scrap of footage from an NFL game, whether broadcast video or the film footage they shoot, must be licensed before aired anywhere. People tried to get around this all the time and use footage "without the express written consent of the National Football League." This got to be such a problem that they instituted a "Catch the Cheaters" program, where anyone on staff could call in and get a bonus for identifying a broadcaster using NFL footage without permission. The fine for such usage is $1,500 per SECOND of footage.
I don't know if the Romney campaign got consent, and I don't know how it works on the Internet, but there's at least 30 seconds of a Patriots game on in the background when Ann Romney is talking.
I don't have time to do this today (light posting throughout), but somebody should call 877-NFL-5675 and see it the Romney campaign got the rights to that NFL footage in the background of their campaign video. Let's try to blow $50,000 of Romney campaign money, shall we? I mean, some of that cash was raised by an alleged child abuser, so it shouldn't be hard for them to part with.
I am a film and video editor, stand-up comedian, and blogger. My editor resume is here. A sample of my stand-up is here. The blog is what you're reading right now. Wasn't that easy?
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