Possible creator of unauthorized Obama ad responds to an e-mail

San Francisco Chronicle
Who is the person behind the Clinton attack ad?
Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer
Monday, March 19, 2007

Just who is ParkRidge47 – the mystery figure who introduced an Internet political attack ad that has stirred the press and political junkies tuned into the early presidential campaign – and what does the videomaker have against Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton?

The political question of the week is the identity of the anonymous person who reworked the classic 1984 ad introducing the Apple Macintosh computers to the world into a biting attack piece against Clinton – and posted it on the popular YouTube Web site....

There are some clues to the identity of the person behind the sophisticated political remix of Ridley Scott's original Apple computer ad

– a so-called video "mashup." Analysts have said the video is representative of the multiplying power and democracy of the Internet and is a harbinger of a brave new era of unauthorized "viral" political ads made by individuals working independently of campaigns and consultants.

The ad was first placed on the YouTube site on March 5 by an anonymous poster signed ParkRidge47, a signature that appears to be a clever jab at the New York senator, who was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1947 and raised in nearby Park Ridge.

After the ad received more than 100,000 hits in two days, Micah Sifrey, editor of TechPresident.com, a Web site that tracks how the Internet is changing politics, sent an e-mail to the poster, asking for more information about how and why the ad was created.

ParkRidge47 wrote back, saying that the "Hillary 1984" ad, which urged Americans to "Vote Different," was inspired by Hollywood movie mogul David Geffen's public critique of Clinton – and "Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives" in the wake of it, according to Sifrey's Web posting.

In the response to Sifrey, ParkRidge47 (www.techpresident.com/node/130) said that the idea for the ad "was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn't register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord."...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/19/BAGSFONU1A16.DTL

LINK TO AD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo

Even considering that it had the original Apple footage to work with. Wow.

Personally, I remember the ad and I have read the book and I just don't get it. I am no Hillary fan by any stretch but she is hardly a Big Brother type. And the quotes from her were benign hardly fascist.

I think it was a cool idea in theory but in execution void of any meaning.

would waste his time with nasty jabs at a fellow Democrat. I won't hold this ad against Obama, since he apparently didn't approve it, but if he ever DOES approve such a nasty thing, I might have to think twice. I'll say again what I've said before: ANY of the Democratic candidates is infinitely superior to ANY of the Repukes. The pointless savaging of Democrat by Democrat is one of the reasons our country is in the pathetic shape it's in now.