Sheep’s clothing

John Jones — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:12:32 +0000

Barack Obama has taken some heat for remarks made to a New York Post reporter attacking Al Sharpton (who’s had a lot to deal with lately, thank you very much) which pundits are arguing were made by an Obama operative. Now there’s this:

source: YouTube, by: ParkRidge47

This hatchet-job on Hillary Clinton, which incorporates footage from Ridley Scott’s striking Super Bowl ad for Apple, is now making its way around YouTube in various guises. Significantly, it ends with a plug for Obama; once again, it seems, Obama’s thugs are on the prowl, taking shots at anyone who would threaten his rise to world supremacy. Whether or not this characterization represents the reality of the situation—apparently the identity of the video’s creator has yet to be established, and the Obama camp has distanced themselves from it—it is clear that the creator of the video is bashing Hillary and providing Obama as an alternative.

With that fact in mind, I’ve yet to see anyone analyze the content of the video to see if this Obama’s-operatives-theory makes sense. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the user who posted the video claims that s/he did so in response to “Hollywood entertainment mogul David Geffen's public critique of Clinton—and ‘Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives’ in the wake of it.” This explanation would be believable enough if it weren’t for the Obama plug at the end. The association with Obama smears him by implying that he is smearing Hillary. Does this seem like a logical move for an Obama-supporter to make?

More telling is the actual argument of the video. By making the association with 1984, the video presents the senator from New York as a Big-Brother-like figure, one who is interested in socializing American culture, if not in the actual spoken text (“people who want to be part of a team, the American team”), than at least by implication. This isn’t a liberal argument against Clinton; it’s a conservative one.

So, either the creator of the ad 1) is pro-Obama, but was ignorant of the video’s rhetorical effect, or 2) the ad was created as an attack on both Hillary and Obama. I vote for 2.

That aside, I like the stylish "O" at the end of the video, fashioned after the old, rainbow-colored Apple logo. While the leaf is a bit distracting—it reminds me of “Ó,” the wrong letter—I enjoy the thick line of the “O” and its perfect circularity. Obama should definitely adopt it for his website. In my opinion, it is far superior to the Bank of America-esque logo he’s using now.

Update: Apparently on today’s episode of Good Morning America, the above argument is mentioned. Some have taken this to be evidence of big-media spin. Unfortunately, since I am not a member of the media, big or otherwise, anyone who wants to take a shot at this blog entry will have to do so by attacking my argument, not my ethos.

viz. - big brother

Sheep’s clothing