Since my family almost single-handedly support Apple, any reference to the legendary 1984 advert made by Ridley Scott was going to catch my eye. Doubtless everyone reading this will have seen the already-infamous YouTube ‘mash-up’ of said advert, this time with a political message – the jarring ‘Vote Different’ (and this is the point where I start throwing things at my shiny MacBook and yelling “Vote Differently, you stupid Americans!”) – but I’m sure embedding the video won’t do any harm.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo]

The so-called ‘viral’ advert was made by the cleverly-named YouTube user ‘ParkRidge47′(Clinton grew up in Park Ridge, Illinois, and was born in 1947) and has caused a storm of media coverage. You’d almost think they had nothing better to talk about.

It’s true that the video is showing the increased importance of the internet for this Presidential campaign (it got over 100,000 hits in two days), something which has also been recently debated because of the slip-ups John McCain has made on his Straight Talk Express, where he has a policy of being on the record all the time. But it’s hardly anything different in American politics – the constant comparisons of this video to those of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 show this. It’s just easier to get around campaign finance laws and copyright infringement if you post on the internet (and, by the way, Apple have yet to make a statement about whether or not they’ll seek legal action).

One thing it does show, though, is the internet’s great power to mislead. I’m not saying that all of the usual adverts that make the rounds in American political campaigns are 100% true, either (just look at Swift Boat). But one thing too few commentaries on this advert pick up on is the fact that, rather than coming from an Obama supporter, it is likely, in fact, to have come from the Republican grassroots. This is not because I automatically assume all Republicans are evil. But what exactly does Obama’s campaign gain from this? After working so hard to achieve his squeaky-clean image, this would take it and trample it in the mud. It makes far more sense to see it as an attempt from the other side to drive a wedge even further between the two most popular candidates. Obama and Clinton agree on most things. They are, after all, both Democrats, and fairly liberal (at least in the American sense) ones at that. But one of them has to win somehow, and this video does neither of their campaigns any favours.

In fact, I’m starting to think that by the time the New Hampshire primary rolls around people will be so sick of hearing about Obama and Clinton that they’ll vote for someone else, anyone else, just so they don’t have to deal with things like this again. Which may be the true message of this video – the internet has the power to mobilise voters. But it also has the power to bore them out of their minds.

(And, speaking of the internet’s power to mislead, who else has checked out Conservapedia, which offers a family-friendly alternative to the rampant liberal bias and British-spelling tendencies of Wikipedia? It’s pretty funny)

The Impact of ‘Hillary 1984′ [Political Wire]
Clinton on Big Sister Video [The Caucus]
Watching Big Sister [Washington Post]
Does the internet liberate or undermine democracy? [The Independent]

Filed under: barackobama, election2008, hillaryclinton, uspolitics on March 21st, 2007