A couple of weeks ago a parody of Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl ad appeared on YouTube and other video sharing sites and, perhaps because of the mystery surrounding its' origin, became something of an overnight internet phenomenon. Now we know the creator of the parody but a larger mystery is revealed and some serious questions are raised. More after the fold.

Directed by Ridley Scott who had become famous for the dystopian futures portrayed in his films Bladerunner and Alien, Apple's commercial is perhaps one of the most memorable advertising campaigns ever and instantly recognizable. In Scott's original ad intended to represent then small independent computer maker Apple overthrowing the tyranny of the behometh IBM, a brave runner throws a hammer at a videoscreen showing a sinister face, reminiscent of IBM's Thomas J. Watson, Sr., hypnotically lecturing an audience of dull worker drones. The parody ad replaced the face shown on the videoscreen with that of 2008 Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and ended with the URL for Barrack Obama's website. Obama is widely seen as Clinton's strongest competition for the 2008 Democratic nomation.

Until now the creator of the parody ad has remained a mystery. Obama's campaign has categorically denied being involved in its' creation and there's been some of speculation that it may have been a Republican attack to discredit both Clinton and Obama. Indeed, the parody ad expertly plays to conspiracist fears of Hillary Clinton as a power-mongering shrew intent on instituting a New World Order government. It's an expert piece of marketing recalling the famous 1988 Willie Horton ad credited to deceased Republican strategist Lee Atwater.

Andrea Mitchell and Alex Johnson at MSNBC reveal though that the creator of the "1984" parody ad is none other than Philip de Vellis of marketing firm Blue State Digital which specializes in advising Democratic candidates and liberal groups. Blue State Digital was also responsible for the design and implementation of Barack Obama's official campagin website whose URL appears at the end of the Clinton smear ad and one of the founding members of the company, Joe Rospars, is employed as the Obama campaign's Director of New Media.

These revelations have cast a dark cloud over the Obama camp amidst speculation that the Obama campaign is directly responsible for the video. Yet the Obama campaign and de Vellis himself assert that de Vellis was acting on his own. de Vellis believes the Clinton campaign to be somehow disingenuous:

“The specific point of the ad was that Obama represents a new kind of politics, and that Senator Clinton’s ‘conversation’ is disingenuous,” he wrote. “And the underlying point was that the old political machine no longer holds all the power.”

While I personally have many concerns about Hillary Clinton, particularly in her courting of the religious right and failure to support equal rights for everyone, including the right of homosexuals to enjoy the same legal and financial benefits of marriage as everyone else (let me know if Hillary has suddenly spoken clearly and loudly for gay marriage -- I don't follow the Hillary noise machine to be honest) I fail to see where Senator Clinton has been "disingenuous". She is what she is and she is a politician. One becomes used to a certain level of ambiguity in political rhetoric and while I wish Clinton was more frank in her views and positions I have little hope that the entire U.S. political system will suddenly transform itself over night.

Neither would I be surprised if the Obama campaign was responsible for the attack ad on Hillary Clinton. I don't know that they are and I can only take their and de Vellis' word at face value at the moment. What does concern me though is that this is yet another instance of the mainstreaming of conspiracist rhetoric into the political conversation, particularly that of liberal politics. While conspiracism and American politics have long been bed fellows, conspiracism is largely a narrative form of scapegoating and traditionally seen in right wing American political movements.

However, in recent times as the U.S. government has resorted to unprecedented secrecy and lies, and amidst high economic and social tensions we've seen the left adopt the politics of conspiracism as it never has before. The horror of the events that took place on September 11, 2001 and their use as a political tool by the Bush administration to maneuver the U.S. into war in Iraq despite no link existing between the country and the terrorist attacks has seen the burgeoning 9/11 Truth movement become a fertile breeding ground for paranoid conspiracy theories. That 9/11 Truth is less a movement than a loose collection of grifters and paranoid crazies does not lessen the impact of conspiracism on the larger public consciousness. Neither does the fact that conspiracist language has become accepted public discourse in the U.S. thanks to the popularity of right wing talk radio and television increased the quality of debate. History in fact shows via the McCarthy/HUAC scandal and similar witch-hunts that conspiracism can have grave consequences. Should we expect different results when the left plays the game?

If we on the left adopt the politics of conspiracism we run the risk of making real the very fears symbolized in Ridley Scott's 1984 commercial.

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