Burnt Orange Report

Inner Child Escapes, Obliterates Tokyo in Computer-Generated Rampage

By Jim Dallas

I'm waiting word as to the outcome of the summary judgment hearing in the Alabama video game killer case (Strickland v. Sony). I don't know much about the case, but I'd like to see a judge order wacky Jack Thompson to go home and play Pong.

Meanwhile, though, this story says that the wave of the future in political advertising is... cartoons:

Politicians looking for a fresh way to get voters' attention have seized on something that is more "South Park" than "West Wing": cartoons. Around the country, candidates are running cheeky animated political ads, mostly on the Internet, but also on television.

...

Animated political spots are not new. Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson both deployed primitive black-and-white cartoons during their 1952 presidential race. But the recent cartoons are far more sophisticated, and wickedly satirical as well.

"They are magnets for attention, and that's the name of the game in political advertising," said Martin Kaplan, an associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California.

The burst of animated ads may be traceable to the wildly and unexpectedly popular "This Land" clip that was unleashed over the Internet by JibJab Media during the 2004 presidential campaign. The musical satire skewered both President Bush and John Kerry.

In it, oversized photos of the candidates' heads were computer-pasted onto animated bodies, and the men traded singing-and-dancing insults to the tune of "This Land Is Your Land," with Bush calling Kerry "a liberal wiener" and Kerry branding the president a "right-wing nut job."

"We've created a monster," said 34-year-old Gregg Spiridellis, co-founder of JibJab Media of Santa Monica, Calif.

A monster indeed. Better send wacky Jack to defend America's children from the inevitable second, er, third, Pearl Harbor: criminal use of anime/manga on behalf of a federal candidate.