IP Democracy: The Comedy Centralization of Political Ads

The New York Times’ Alessandra Stanley has this Week in Review piece about a new phenomenon in political advertising: humorous ads. She notes that many of the new crop of campaign ads are funny (or try to be funny), a trend she calls the “Comedy Centralization” of political advertising.

What’s interesting is how the Internet has made Stanley’s piece come alive by presenting in a sidebar the actual video ads for readers to watch. The most effective of these is this spot by Democrat Ned Lamont, who’s running against incumbent Senator Joe Lieberman, in which the Lamont team lampoons Lieberman’s negative ads by pointing out that Lamont “makes a bad cup of coffee” and has a “messy desk,” among other claims.

A new twist to the 2006 campaign TV ads is the inclusion in of video obtained from the Internet.

Mr. Corker [Republican Senate candidate Bob Corker] was undoubtedly less amusing around the house when pictures of Julia kissing a girl on the lips at a college party on Facebook.com began whipping around cyberspace: one of the perils of 21st-century technology is that those who live by the Internet can die by the Internet.

As Senator George Allen, the Virginia Republican who was caught on tape calling a college student of Indian descent a “macaca,” learned, video cameras are everywhere. So, of course, campaign ads increasingly include a clip of an opponent saying or doing something foolish on camera. Some include snippets of the opponents’ own ads. Video grabs are easy thanks to advances in digital editing and popular because so many Internet sites and comedy shows thrive on them.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 29, 2006 3:39 PM to IP Democracy