Maker of Anti-Clinton Video Outed, Loses Job 401
Raul654 writes "Philip de Vellis, the author of the anti-Hilary Clinton viral video was outed yesterday on the Huffington Post. The company he worked for, Blue State Digital — a Democratic Internet strategy company that does work for Barack Obama — has now fired him as a result. Said Vellis: 'I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.'"
Re:Was good (Score:5, Insightful)
That he did. He also demonstrated that if you stand up for something, be prepared to be slapped down.
Here's hoping he can get back up.
Re:Was good (Score:4, Insightful)
A rip-off of a Mac ad shows imagination?
Must be some definition of imagination that I'm not familiar with.
Primary Season (Score:5, Insightful)
All the "outrage" is a farce (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/127
Re:Vast, left-wing conspiracy (Score:3, Insightful)
At least she is being a good sport about it, publicly at least. I wonder is she would have felt differently if it were George W. Bush's face up there rather than hers. I wonder if would have resigned or gotten a promotion.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
A rip-off of a Mac ad shows imagination?"
Well, he used a fairly iconic commercial as a platform for parody to make a political point.
Not only that...the job he did appeared fairly good to my eyes...quality-wise.
I'd say he did a good job...made an effective point, and with little investment but personal time editing the video, he reached a worldwide audience both on the internet and television.
You don't see that very often...
Re:Old Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
1. The guy worked at a tech company that assisted in Obamas campaign we well as other campaigns. You'd be surprised by the number of subcontractors in a campaign who don't give a hoot about it, they just have a job of keeping the web server running, or whatever.
2. Did you watch the video? Its not even an attack ad really. It just says that 2008 won't be like 1984. It seems that the choice to use Hillary was fairly inconsequential to the message.
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? (Score:3, Insightful)
[...]
More on this theme on my blog if anyone cares
Re:Pioneering? (Score:5, Insightful)
Man...I sincerely HOPE so...this is so much cheaper, maybe it will reduce the insane amounts of money political machines have to generate, and hence how beholden to the donors at the end of the race.
Anything to take some of the money out of the politics, I think, would be useful thing.
Re:Was good (Score:5, Insightful)
It's general politics, not a Democrat or Republican thing. You want all good to stick to the candidate, and all bad to stick to "anyone but the candidate". And I'm not even saying that this is a case of the candidate deliberately passing the buck off to someone else; this guy's story seems reasonable enough. Gee, a person who works on political ads being A) a political enough person to want to make an ad in his spare time, and B) knowing how to make a high quality ad: who'da thunk it?
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What's the beef? (Score:4, Insightful)
His employer, being that it works in the "politics industry", had a policy forbidding employees from political activity to avoid any impropriaties. He violated the policy and was fired.
An employer I used to work for was creating lottery systems. It forbid employees from playing lottery games. Violations were dealt very harshly.
Re:Was good (Score:5, Insightful)
Was bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
Given that we are currently living under a president who was never elected by the people, I think that's a pretty specious argument.
Re:Was good (Score:1, Insightful)
Where is the typical /. outcry? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Unnamed sources exposed Bush as being behind propoganda lie for political reasons, claims "First Amendment" (meaning Patriot Act in dubya-speak) gives authority to release anti-terrorist video anyway in time of war. Democrats to issue supeanas against the entire US population in all red states until they expose every right-wing youtubers as the unintelligent racists we know they are. In related news, big oil and tobacco companies suspected of making money on the day this video was released, causes temperatures to rise an alarming 10 degrees between 8 am and noon."
Re:Resigned, Fired: Just word games (Score:3, Insightful)
His being fired shows a hard choice made by his employer, possibly unethical. (Off-the-clock, not associated with the company, etc, etc.)
Unless you meant 'does it matter' in the 'long run', and then nothing we do matters. We'll all be dead and gone in less than 100 years, and after a few millennia, the human race may not even exist any more. (Cute, Firefox thinks I spelled 'millennia' wrong.)
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
That doesn't require imagination.
Not only that...the job he did appeared fairly good to my eyes...quality-wise.
That requires technical skill, not imagination.
I'd say he did a good job...made an effective point, and with little investment but personal time editing the video, he reached a worldwide audience both on the internet and television.
Maybe I'm clueless, but I just don't see what the "effective point" of that ad was. It looks like just a cheap attempt to say, "Hillary bad". And indeed she is. But you could replace the video of her in the ad with Bush, or Cheney, or Obama, or the challenger in the dog-catcher primary for Hicksville County, Alabama. What actual negative information does it convey about Hillary Clinton other than "She, like the rest of the human race, kinda looks scary (but actually mostly boring) when edited into that cool Mac ad." ?
Seriously.
Re:Clarification (Score:3, Insightful)
That aside the bipartisan nature of US politics is too divisive. Yes Bush won but almost half of the voters picked the other guy. Thats always going to lead to probems and recriminations, especially when the winner promotes controversial policies. The US needs some more credible parties that reflect popular opinion so thats its not a one or the other choice or maybe Proportional Representation becomes an option.
Re:Old Strategy (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, just like the choice to target IBM in the original ad was inconsequential.
Oh, wait.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
I think Arianna should hire him to make more viral videos. It would be great promotion for the Huffington Post.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Clarification (Score:2, Insightful)
Your statement "the voters are the final arbiters" is correct in a sense - the voters in question are those who make up the electoral college. But the citizens of the United States are not the final arbiters - their voice was heard, and ignored. This is an inherent flaw in the structure of our government.
The electoral college was ostensibly instituted to prevent mob rule from selecting our president. Yet this is an extremely unusual occurrence;
"In a multi-candidate race where candidates have strong regional appeal, as in 1824, it is quite possible that a candidate who collects the most votes on a nation-wide basis will not win the electoral vote. In a two-candidate race, that is less likely to occur. But it did occur in the Hayes/Tilden election of 1876 and the Harrison/Cleveland election of 1888 due to the statistical disparity between vote totals in individual State elections and the national vote totals. This also occured in the 2000 presidential election, where George W. Bush received fewer popular votes than Albert Gore Jr., but received a majority of electoral votes." (How is it possible for the electoral vote to produce a different result than the nation-wide popular vote? [archives.gov])
In fact the original principle behind the original electoral college (we're on something like Mark III now) was that the most knowledgeable individuals from each state would select the president. This is not democracy. But then, neither is the system we have today.
Re:Was good (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the rest, can we stop calling people we don't like fascists? The word has lost almost all meaning now.
Outed as a Lying Jerk (Score:3, Insightful)
If he had not signed it "Obama", he might not have been fired. If his boss hadn't had Obama as a client, he might not have gotten fired.
This guy is a jerk. He's got the right to publish whatever video he comes up with, except when he lies in it. He has no right to frame Obama with that attack ad. And his boss has the right to fire a guy who pisses off the clients.
Subtly effective (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Resigned, Fired: Just word games (Score:4, Insightful)
It was not a hard choice for his employer at all. According to the news, all employee contracts for that company specifically prohibit off-the-clock political productions of this sort by its employees, precisely because perception is more important than reality in their business. They cannot afford to have the perception that a contractor of one political candidate made X advertisement through under the table money, so they have to prohibit all such connections in the terms of their employee contracts.
Re:Was good (Score:5, Insightful)
Her ramblings showed the entire point of the ad. The ad was implying that Hillary speaks in meaningless and empty rhetoric that the masses eat up like mindless brainwashed drones. It was THIS, rather than any implications of fascism as said elsewhere in this thread, that the ad was presenting. The ad was trying to encourage people to try something fresh and different. It was effective in the internal coherence of this message and in the appropriateness of the analogy for relaying that message, which is why it has received so much attention and popularity.
Re:Was good (Score:1, Insightful)
Shame on the Obama campaign, I thought they were supposed to be above this manipulative junk.
Yes, stand up for something... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, stand up for something...
The tallest blade of grass is the first to get cut.
1st shots (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember the questions about when a Vice President moves up due to the senility/mental competence of the President during Reagans second term. After seeing how the press and other candidates treat everyone running, I question the sanity of anyone who want's the damn job! Colin Powell might be the smartest man of our times. He refused to put himself or his family through this asinine process, that's character!
Re:He's right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama did not hide this fact - because it was never a fact. He went to a private school; one that was NOT a madrasa in any sense of the word.
- Though he claimed to be a Christian now, how come no muslim want his head like they did with the Afghan guy who converted out of Islam?
Because he was never a muslim?
- He claimed to be an Israeli supporter but he said Palestinians are the most oppressed people on Earth (Darfur anyone?)
Support of Israel means turning a blind eye to human rights violations?
One can support Israel, and still care about innocent Palestinians caught in the middle in this conflict.
One can also support Palestinians without supporting the terrorist tactics of a radical minority.
Darfur is a tragedy. But the US is not supplying the Sudanese government with $3 Billion in military aid each year. Now tell me who is more oppressed.
Re:Was good (Score:5, Insightful)
It does not guarantee us freedom from the consequences of our speech.
Re:Was good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple Original 1984 video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo [youtube.com]
Parody: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo [youtube.com]
Would you call this "Where's the Beef" parody imaginative? Probably not---
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-Sc0Wdi0Vi4 [youtube.com]
How much difference is there between the two videos? The parody borrows the vast majority of it's content from the original-- the faces, the cadence, the audio (except for Clinton's voice), the facial expressions are all exactly the same.
If I take a song, and change 5% of the song, I really can't go around claiming my new song is original, or call it a mashup, a blend or a cutup.
A good hip-hop, IDM, mashup, cutup, etc. song will usually only sample small pieces of the original, and manipulate that small piece. A good mashup will borrow a bunch of small pieces from a collection of different songs, and combine them in a unique way.
Is it good technically? Sure--- it's clean, the creator kept the images in sync; as the camera pans across the stage, the prole heads pass in front of the television, etc. Sure, good job. But don't call it imaginative.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
2. well-made
3. pretty damn cool
4. free speech
5. Embarrassed his employers and their employers.
Because of free speech he was not jailed. No company is required to keep you on after you did something stupid, no matter how cool.
That said, he will not lack for employment.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, your constitution does not guarantee you freedom of all speech, but that which it does guarantee, it further guarantees no consequences.
That speech that is free is only speech that talks negative of the government (positive speech having never been threatened). And the normal consequences of that speech, being jailed, fined, or killed, are guaranteed not to occur (or, as much of a guarantee that the government can normally give - anyone attempting to confine you, take your money, or kill you, just because of such speech would be guilty of an offense and liable for jail time themselves).
It's not the speech that got the maker of this video in trouble. It's the association they had with the Barack campaign. While there are guarantees of freedom of association, it works both ways: the Barack campaign has chosen not to associate with him. They are perfectly free to do that. What would be illegal is for the government (any branch) to force that disassociation.
Re:Was good (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, we have lots of anti MS people, but that does not mean we are all mindless drones who cannot discuss any other current affairs.