Read a Pacific Northwest, liberal perspective on world, national, and local politics. From majestic Redmond, Washington - the Northwest Progressive Institute Official Blog.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

"1984" mystery solved

Arianna Huffington "solved" the mystery of who was behind the Hillary Clinton "1984" mashup ad, which you can view on YouTube.

Now the supposed mashup artist has posted at Huffington Post under his real name, Phil de Vellis. He was described by Huffington in her post as the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown and as being employed by Blue State Digital, a firm created my members of Howard Dean's Internet team. Well, he was until today:
I've resigned from my employer, Blue State Digital, an internet company that provides technology to several presidential campaigns, including, full disclosure, Obama's. The company had no idea that I'd created the ad, and neither did any of our clients. But I've decided to resign anyway so as not to harm them, even by implication.
And isn't that the height of ethics, from the guy who ripped off the greatest commercial in the history of television.

But at least he says he did it using a Macintosh. :-) Up next: Plop, plop, fizz fizz, oh what a relief it is to vote for who I want you to vote for....

UPDATE, 7:25 PM: Chris Cillizza reports at his Washington Post blog that one of the founders of Blue State Digital is, in fact, Obama's director of new media. Make of it what you will.

MORE, 7:50 PM: Obama may have a serious PR problem on his hands. He was widely quoted as saying the following a few weeks back, during the Geffen dust-up:
"I told my staff that I don't want us to be a party to these kinds of distractions because I want to make sure that we're spending time talking about issues," Obama told the paper. He added, "My preference going forward is that we have to be careful not to slip into the game as it is customarily played."
Oopsie. The sad thing for Obama is that he keeps getting damaged by his supporters. It happens, but I'm relatively certain Obama will bounce back pretty easily. But he might want to um, do a staff and consultant review, see if any of them ever did anything rotten in Iowa in 2004.

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