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Maker of Anti-Clinton Video Outed, Loses Job
Raul654 writes "Philip de Vellis, the author of the anti-Hilary Clinton viral video was outed yesterday on the Huffington Post. The company he worked for, Blue State Digital — a Democratic Internet strategy company that does work for Barack Obama — has now fired him as a result. Said Vellis: 'I made the "Vote Different" ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.'"
de Vellis: "I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process."
That he did. He also demonstrated that if you stand up for something, be prepared to be slapped down.
Here's hoping he can get back up.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Showed imagination?
A rip-off of a Mac ad shows imagination?
Must be some definition of imagination that I'm not familiar with.
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Primaries are always fun, if only because you get to watch each party attack itself for awhile before making their pick and pretending all that never happened.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
Here's what I make of this whole flap -- not much: Clinton, Obama, the ad's maker (now out of a job), his employer and the press are all just playing their roles ... and the play is a farce. No one's really outraged by that video clip (especially Clinton). And no one really believes it's out of bounds. They're all just reading from the script. ... Of course, that's what high-stakes presidential politics is all about these days. More on this theme on my blog if anyone cares:
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http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/127
A rip-off of a Mac ad shows imagination?"
Well, he used a fairly iconic commercial as a platform for parody to make a political point.
Not only that...the job he did appeared fairly good to my eyes...quality-wise.
I'd say he did a good job...made an effective point, and with little investment but personal time editing the video, he reached a worldwide audience both on the internet and television.
You don't see that very often...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Dude,
1. The guy worked at a tech company that assisted in Obamas campaign we well as other campaigns. You'd be surprised by the number of subcontractors in a campaign who don't give a hoot about it, they just have a job of keeping the web server running, or whatever.
2. Did you watch the video? Its not even an attack ad really. It just says that 2008 won't be like 1984. It seems that the choice to use Hillary was fairly inconsequential to the message.
Man...I sincerely HOPE so...this is so much cheaper, maybe it will reduce the insane amounts of money political machines have to generate, and hence how beholden to the donors at the end of the race.
Anything to take some of the money out of the politics, I think, would be useful thing.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Notice the insertion of the word "Democrats". Gee, let's take a wild guess as to what your politics are. I mean, it's not as though we currently have a Republican president who has sacked official after official to cover for it's bungling, or anything of that nature.
It's general politics, not a Democrat or Republican thing. You want all good to stick to the candidate, and all bad to stick to "anyone but the candidate". And I'm not even saying that this is a case of the candidate deliberately passing the buck off to someone else; this guy's story seems reasonable enough. Gee, a person who works on political ads being A) a political enough person to want to make an ad in his spare time, and B) knowing how to make a high quality ad: who'da thunk it?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
There is no beef.
His employer, being that it works in the "politics industry", had a policy forbidding employees from political activity to avoid any impropriaties. He violated the policy and was fired.
An employer I used to work for was creating lottery systems. It forbid employees from playing lottery games. Violations were dealt very harshly.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I think that was more a demonstration of the "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" principle.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Given that we are currently living under a president who was never elected by the people, I think that's a pretty specious argument.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, he used a fairly iconic commercial as a platform for parody to make a political point.
That doesn't require imagination.
Not only that...the job he did appeared fairly good to my eyes...quality-wise.
That requires technical skill, not imagination.
I'd say he did a good job...made an effective point, and with little investment but personal time editing the video, he reached a worldwide audience both on the internet and television.
Maybe I'm clueless, but I just don't see what the "effective point" of that ad was. It looks like just a cheap attempt to say, "Hillary bad". And indeed she is. But you could replace the video of her in the ad with Bush, or Cheney, or Obama, or the challenger in the dog-catcher primary for Hicksville County, Alabama. What actual negative information does it convey about Hillary Clinton other than "She, like the rest of the human race, kinda looks scary (but actually mostly boring) when edited into that cool Mac ad." ?
Seriously.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
But he didn't bite the hand that fed him - in fact, he made an ad that will bring more publicity to Obama now than ever intended. Firing him was probably one of the best things his employer could have done to bring in more traffic for Barack. I mean, its on the Slashdot front-page, for one.
Um, didn't Obama just get elected for the first time in 2004?
As for the rest, can we stop calling people we don't like fascists? The word has lost almost all meaning now.
"In the game of life, someone always has to lose. To me, if life were fair, that someone would always be Oklahoma." -DKR
De Vellis was fired because he made a video attacking Clinton, fraudulently crediting it to the Obama campaign, while the Obama campaign was an actual (if tangential) customer where he actually works.
If he had not signed it "Obama", he might not have been fired. If his boss hadn't had Obama as a client, he might not have gotten fired.
This guy is a jerk. He's got the right to publish whatever video he comes up with, except when he lies in it. He has no right to frame Obama with that attack ad. And his boss has the right to fire a guy who pisses off the clients.
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make install -not war
It was not a hard choice for his employer at all. According to the news, all employee contracts for that company specifically prohibit off-the-clock political productions of this sort by its employees, precisely because perception is more important than reality in their business. They cannot afford to have the perception that a contractor of one political candidate made X advertisement through under the table money, so they have to prohibit all such connections in the terms of their employee contracts.
Her ramblings showed the entire point of the ad. The ad was implying that Hillary speaks in meaningless and empty rhetoric that the masses eat up like mindless brainwashed drones. It was THIS, rather than any implications of fascism as said elsewhere in this thread, that the ad was presenting. The ad was trying to encourage people to try something fresh and different. It was effective in the internal coherence of this message and in the appropriateness of the analogy for relaying that message, which is why it has received so much attention and popularity.
This is just one of the first shots in what will be the dirtiest campaign in history. This is going to make all the comments on /. about Bush seem like hugs and kisses, and that's just the Democrats beating each other up! The Republicans will probably end up eating their own too. When we get to the final 2 standing the public will be so sick of the whole thing that I expect the lowest voter turnout in history. It would be great if a couple of truly knowlegeable and likeable candidates showed up but I won't hold my breath.
I remember the questions about when a Vice President moves up due to the senility/mental competence of the President during Reagans second term. After seeing how the press and other candidates treat everyone running, I question the sanity of anyone who want's the damn job! Colin Powell might be the smartest man of our times. He refused to put himself or his family through this asinine process, that's character!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
- Obama went to a madrasa in Indonesia in his youth. He hid this fact before it was brought to light.
Obama did not hide this fact - because it was never a fact. He went to a private school; one that was NOT a madrasa in any sense of the word.
- Though he claimed to be a Christian now, how come no muslim want his head like they did with the Afghan guy who converted out of Islam?
Because he was never a muslim?
- He claimed to be an Israeli supporter but he said Palestinians are the most oppressed people on Earth (Darfur anyone?)
Support of Israel means turning a blind eye to human rights violations?
One can support Israel, and still care about innocent Palestinians caught in the middle in this conflict.
One can also support Palestinians without supporting the terrorist tactics of a radical minority.
Darfur is a tragedy. But the US is not supplying the Sudanese government with $3 Billion in military aid each year. Now tell me who is more oppressed.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
The Constitution guarantees us freedom of speech.
It does not guarantee us freedom from the consequences of our speech.
1. effective
2. well-made
3. pretty damn cool
4. free speech
5. Embarrassed his employers and their employers.
Because of free speech he was not jailed. No company is required to keep you on after you did something stupid, no matter how cool.
That said, he will not lack for employment.
$signature =~ s/$signature//;
I have seen more and more of these types of comments lately. They add nothing to the discussion, and your sarcasm only hurts the community here.
Sure, we have lots of anti MS people, but that does not mean we are all mindless drones who cannot discuss any other current affairs.