Newsgroup: it.arti.cinema
Titolo: Amateur Audience Creates Anti-Bush Ads on the web

December 20, 2003, The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/fashion/21MOVE.html?ei=5062&en=752006413be9b
176&ex=1072587600&partner=GOOGLE&pagewanted=print&position=
When the Web-based political group MoveOn.org announced a contest in
October for homemade commercials challenging the Bush administration
(the winner to be shown on television during the week of the State of
the Union address) grass- roots America proved a willing and eager
advertising agency.
Thirty-second spots poured in by the hundreds in e-mail attachments to
MoveOn.org, which has already shown that the Internet can be a
battering ram for political activism by organizing protests against the
invasion of Iraq. Last week, the group posted 1,017 of the amateur
commercials on a Web site (
www.bushin30seconds.org
), asking viewers to
pick their favorites.
In the first hour of polling on Wednesday, more than 5,700 votes were
logged. So many people visited the site that MoveOn, experiencing
bandwidth problems, limited the curious to 20 ads a day.
Next month the top vote-getters will be shown to a panel of left-
leaning celebrity judges including Moby, Michael Moore, Janeane
Garofalo, Margaret Cho and Gus Van Sant, with one or more winning
entries to be broadcast as paid advertisements in Washington, D.C., in
potential swing states or perhaps nationally.
What the cascade of entries demonstrates is that the home-movie
revolution made possible by inexpensive digital camcorders and off-the-
shelf software has elevated the United States from merely being a
nation of wedding videographers.
Even so, the production values of many spots are a bit shaky, and the
content often overheated. "Bush Cheney Auto World," a typical entry,
from Tracy Spaight, a high-school history teacher in Houston, posits an
oily salesman whose motto is: "Where we always say what you want to
hear." But a number of the ads are unexpectedly professional-looking,
at least on a par with the burnished style and hard-hitting messages of
political ads made by Madison Avenue pros or K Street consultants in
untucked shirttails.
The amateur ad makers of the left are charged up about the country's
dependence on fossil fuels, the plight of education and the $87.5
billion spending package for Iraq. They tabulate Mr. Bush's perceived
deceptions. He is "Bushoccio," an inflatable Hot Air President Doll
whose box bears the product warning: "Not designed for poor people. Not
actually elected."
Contributors to the contest include recent graduates of the Kennedy
School of Government, a teacher from Detroit, stand-up comics, amateur
impressionists, a D.J. and more than a few self-styled rappers.
Sets and props have a quaintly home-grown provenance. Pies and cakes
are used to illustrate budget and tax cuts. A pot on the verge of
boiling over is Iraq. Water gurgling down a drain is "American
Credibility." A toilet flushes away "Our Children's Future," played in
another ad by a fragile U.S. Grade A egg.
Movies and TV shows are the ad makers' grist. "I'm concerned, George,
I'm concerned about how you've dealt with the economy," drones a
computer in a spot titled "2004: A Political Odyssey."
Christopher Fink, an independent filmmaker in California, used his
ranch-style house in the San Fernando Valley as a set and recruited his
sister as cinematographer after she made an accomplished video of his
wife's baby shower.
In the spot titled "If Parents Acted Like Bush," Mr. Fink plays the
president as a cad who beds down with special interests. His car pulls
away from the house in the morning, leaving his teenage daughter (Mr.
Fink's niece) to find her own way to school. He buys a motorcycle and
tells the Terminator-face biker that his daughter will pay for it.
Then she walks in on him in his bedroom, snuggling with a blonde who
isn't her mother. "It's O.K.," he cries, "she's rich!"
And how much did the spot cost? "Including catering? That was most of
the budget â?" the doughnuts," Mr. Fink said. "It couldn't have cost me
more than 50 bucks."
Donnie Deutsch, a prominent New York advertising executive who worked
on the campaign of Bill Clinton in 1992, looked at a sample of the
MoveOn ads last week and was impressed. "I thought some of it was very
fresh and interesting - obviously amateurish in some of its creative
license - but certainly very creative in its thinking," he said.
However, Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who worked on Arnold
Schwarzenegger's campaign for governor of California, was more
dismissive. "I'd say a lot of this looks like MoveOn self-promotion,"
he said in a message sent, appropriately enough, by e-mail over his
BlackBerry. "Having an insult- the- president home-movie contest is not
smart politics."
Through its Voter Fund, which solicits donations online, in part from
Web surfers who must register to view the anti-Bush ads, MoveOn aims to
raise about $15 million for advertising in battleground states to
unseat Mr. Bush, said Eli Pariser, who oversees the group's fund-
raising.
In addition to the amateur ads, MoveOn has a professional agency on
retainer. But Mr. Pariser said he was so pleased with the ads that have
rolled in that MoveOn may approach its 1.7 million members in this
country and say, "Here are 10 great ads, and we want to run all of
them."
It would not be the first time the group has proven the power of the
Internet for political activism. Founded five years ago to oppose the
impeachment of President Bill Clinton, MoveOn.org became a catalyst for
demonstrations earlier this year, and subsequently raised more than $7
million from 133,000 donors to oppose Mr. Bush's policies. Last month
two billionaire philanthropists, George Soros and Peter B. Lewis,
announced they would match contributions to the group up to $5 million
between them.
The content of the MoveOn ads is circumscribed by the campaign finance
reforms of the McCain-Feingold Law, upheld earlier this month by the
Supreme Court. While prohibiting soft-money donations to political
parties, the law allows donations to flow to independent groups like
MoveOn as long they run only informational ads and do not specifically
endorse a candidate.
Thus MoveOn's call for submissions was careful to solicit ads that
would help voters "understand the truth about George Bush." No ads
supporting the president's policies were sent in, contest organizers
noted. They also disqualified about 100 submissions, including some for
reasons of taste. A spot showing a frog dropped into boiling water, a
metaphor for "how the administration is turning up the heat in this
country," according to its director, was deemed unsuitable for
television.
Still, plenty of the ads that made the cut exhibit the inflamed
passions of street rallies. The scenarios are sometimes closer to angry
guerrilla theater than witty "Saturday Night Live" spoofs. A man fills
his gas tank, then shoots the cashier instead of paying. "If you
wouldn't tolerate this from a normal citizen," the screen reads, "why
would you from your president?"
"Follow the Leader" compares Mr. Bush to a schoolyard bully who shoots
a schoolmate in the back. "Connect the Dots" maintains that Mr. Bush
"has established links to known terrorist organizations." Still another
commercial claims he has "ties to the Bin Laden family."
Larry McCarthy, a Republican strategist who in 1988 helped produce a
notorious television ad using a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, to
suggest that the Democratic nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, was soft
on crime, has not seen the MoveOn ads, but he admired the idea.
"It's certainly proof of the march of technology, letting everybody and
anybody be an ad maker," he said.
"As a fund-raiser gimmick, I think it's pretty good," he continued. "I
wouldn't be surprised if somebody on the Republican side decided that
there's just as much or more fodder on Howard Dean, so why don't you
let those little Republicans with camcorders have a go at it too?"
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 bandwidth problems, limited the curious to 20 ads a day.
hai rotto il cazzo con questi messaggini
vedi di fare festa

 hai rotto il cazzo con questi messaggini
Che sei un cretino te l'ho gia' detto?

 Che sei un cretino te l'ho gia' detto?
maestra, ha iniziato lui ad offendere!
sei il mio nuovo mito.
duccio, duccio, duccio!!!
ps. la tua bocca riesce anche ad articolare altre parole oltre 'cretino'?
duccio, duccio, duccio!!!

 ps. la tua bocca riesce anche ad articolare altre parole oltre 'cretino'?
direi di si, ma al momento non trovo migliore e piu' precisa definizione.