City Pages: Counterpunching The Swift Boaters, One Download At A Time

[question everything]

News Briefs · · Vol 25 · Issue 1246 · PUBLISHED 10/20/04

URL: www.citypages.com/databank/25/1246/article12574.asp

Counterpunching The Swift Boaters, One Download At A Time

by Jim Walsh

Five weeks ago, Phil Calvit and a group of his south Minneapolis neighbors were fed up with the Democratic Party. The Republican convention had bumped President Bush's poll lead to double digits, the Swift Boat loudmouths were getting all the pub, and Calvit and his friends couldn't get a lawn sign from the local Kerry/Edwards campaign headquarters. "It was like, 'My God, we're gonna lose this thing,'" says Calvit, a freelance ad-copy writer. "We're taking all these punches and no one's doing anything.'"

So Calvit and his neighbor, Kelley Garry-Marschall, decided to do something. They recruited 10 other like-minded folks, raised some money, and formed a 527 committee--a nonprofit established for the purpose of political activity and named for the tax code that governs it. Then they wrote and produced a TV commercial that suggests that Bush's war on terror is the best thing that ever happened to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda recruitment efforts, and set up a website (www.georgethemenace.org).

They intended to air the commercial on local TV, but have been met with resistance from all of the stations, and even some friends. "When we show it to people, they either go, 'That's great! I wanna see it again!' Or they go, 'Ugh,' and make a face like a grenade just went off," Calvit says. In his dealings with station managers, Calvit pointed out that the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a piece using the same satirical device, and that the Times' Katherine Seelye interviewed his group for a story. The stations, predictably, were still squeamish.

(snip)

[Randomthought]

1. I loved it!

watched it three times

[pacalo]

2. This is good! (Sadly, the tongue-in-cheek flavor has a lot of truth in it)