INFORMED SPECULATION. Since Mike Tomasky raised the question of the origins of the Hillary 1984 internet ad, which ends with the url for the Obama campaign, BarackObama.com, I thought I'd ask around in pro-Obama technologist circles and see what people had to say. Adam Conner, a blogger with RunObama.com, pointed the finger to Hollywood. "I can't imagine any campaign ever being brave enough to officially authorize it or any political media firm with the skills to create it," he said, when contacted by instant messenger via Facebook. His best guess: that it came from "someone with previous high-tech editing skills, maybe hollywood?... they would've had to get a high quality copy of the original ad too i would imagine." The original ad, of course, is this 1984 Superbowl ad for Apple, which heralded the release of the MacIntosh computer on Jan. 24, 1984. That ad was directed by Ridley Scott (who, conspiracy mavens will note, more recently did the CGI-intensive Gladiator for Dreamworks SKG, which was co-founded by Obama donor David Geffen).
Another technology expert, however, pointed out that the ad into which Hillary's face has been inserted is not the original 1984 ad, but this 2004 remake, in which the runner who throws the sledge-hammer is wearing an iPod. That makes the question of getting access to a high-resolution clip of the 1984 ad moot, since the 2004 ad has been in digital circulation since then. The new modifications made to the ad could have been done by a whiz running Final Cut Pro on an Apple.
The Obama campaign, for its part, has denied having anything to do with the video.
One thing that makes me think this was not a G.O.P. hit is the viral flow pattern. I first saw the ad on MyDD, right before it jumped to Josh Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo, on March 5. Those are pro-Democratic sites, and that's the same day other Democratic political technologists started getting the ad e-mailed to them. I asked Josh via instant messenger where he got the link from, and he says a friend of his who knew the ad's creators sent it to him and that "the person assured me the creators were not tied to a campaign or a political org" and that "i took it as a given that they were dems [given who was doing the iming] and that they liked obama and that that was the point of their creating the video." And there you have it. The most likely explanation is the most obvious one: The ad is the product of Democrats who are frustrated with the Clinton campaign, and like Obama.
UPDATE: The original poster of the video on YoutTube appears to be someone calling him or herself ParkRidge47, aged 59. Park Ridge is both a town in New Jersey and -- this can't just be a coincidence, right? -- the suburb of Chicago where Hillary Clinton, also aged 59, was raised.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
