Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

MTV News serves up an alternative view of the anti-Hillary Clinton grassroots ad on YouTube that features Hillary in the remake of Apple's famed 1984 ad, created it seems by a Barack Obama supporter. I mentioned the ad in my earlier post today titled "Dump Into the Information River."

If nothing else, in a run for the White House in which candidates are expected to have to spend upward of $100 million each to be contenders, the noise made by a home-cooked ad seemingly created outside an official campaign organization proves this election will be about more than what the candidates themselves say. But despite what pundits are saying about how the ad shows Clinton as hopelessly out of touch and mired in old-school thinking, don't expect these kind of guerilla tactics to be the tipping point - so says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television.

"I think the impact will be minimal," he said. "The fact that it's an anti-Hillary commercial done in the old Apple style carries some message, but it's clear someone did a typical cool YouTube thing, but whoever made it was in no way a political strategist."

Thompson said if candidates were really looking to get a new media edge on their rivals, they would look to the big screen instead of YouTube. "[Al Gore's environmental documentary] 'An Inconvenient Truth' proved that after how many centuries of communicating political messages the same way - making a speech at a podium and talking loud - that movie proved you can make a point with modern technologies like PowerPoint and really make an impact. If I were running for president now, I wouldn't be thinking about YouTube or commercials, I'd be trying to produce three movies like that on my pet subjects."

Perhaps John Edwards should do an episode of MTV's Cribs.