Barack Obama won the North Carolina primary last night, but he may have lost his #1 fan. And to Mike Gravel, that player hater!
Barack plays hoops, Gravel authors a dance mix, Hillary struggles with the coffee machine, and more in our weekly roundup of political video hits and misses.
In this week's best videos, a McCain girl strikes back; Letterman and McCain jab each other; McCain releases what may be the cheapest political TV ad ever; Gravel goes psychedelic; and more. Also, today marks 40 years since MLK was killed; watch his last speech.
The Letter Wars: MoveOn fights a letter from Clinton donors with their own letter; Political Machine is apparently some sort of game about politics. We're not sure; a conversation about Obama and the "digital presidency" is revived on Slashdot; and Mike Gravel is still in this thing, even if YouTube doesn't think so.
Weighing in at not quite 2 tons of fun, the McCain Girls are tearing up the YouTube charts and shattering a whole lot of eardrums. Are they hip? Do they make John McCain hip? The jury is still out on that.
And while the McCain Girls have racked up more than a half million views in just one week, they are still a good bit shy of the total number times people have watched John McCain sing that old Beach Boy's ditty. Combining the various clips and mash-ups of the ol' hipster singing "Bomb Iran," McCain has been viewed at least 5 million times. More than 1.1 million of those views were of his unedited clip. For my money, though, I prefer Mike Gravel's remake of John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance" to McCain's surf band homage:
Making delegate calculus easier for March 4 and beyond; a city from John McCain is on sale for $1,000,000,000,000.95; Glassbooth builds a Facebook app you help you choose your candidate; a web art project works on the John McCain-as-Wilfrod Brimley trick; how a volunteer helped organize Texas for Obama; and Mike Gravel threatens to sue a pro-Clinton 527.
Ralph Nader is announcing his Vice Presidential running mate today at noon, an unorthodox move to some, but required due to the onerous rules regarding petitioning for ballot access in many states. I predict he will pick former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel.
Barack Obama has been accused of “plagiarizing” others’ campaign speeches, including those of his friend, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. Whether or not absorbing phrases from friends — or even opponents — constitutes rhetorical pillaging or benign borrowing, everyone does it, and videos have been popping up to prove it. On a similar note, know your campaign talking points!
Also, “Yes We Can” is continuing to inspire some very, very bad songwriting.
So today we bring you a favorites list in two parts: War of the Words and Very, Very Bad Songs.
Mike Gravel throws another rock, sort of; Mitt Romney gets kicked on his way down; Sean Hannity sideswipes Obama; Rosemary Watson prays that Hillary gets to the White House; Ron Paul is a virus?!; Team Clinton shoots an air ball; and Will.i.am says Yes.I.can.
Can. we. stop. with. the. wierd. punctuation?
Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee win the Iowa caucuses on a night of record turnouts, especially by youth voters; could Eventful demands be accurate predictors of primary results?; Elaine Young considers what effect social media may have had on last night's results; Ron Paul gets dissed, again, by the media; Chris Dodd and Joe Biden drop out, but Mike Gravel absolutely DID NOT; a new poll confirms that more Americans are getting their election news online; and what if the top GOP web consultants were trekkies?