Commercial: 1984 Political Apple

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJklyhWniDQ

With 2007 getting underway, the year before presidential elections, a rise in political campaigning, debates and fundraisers has begun. Any newspaper, news channel or radio program will, with out fail, will make some sort of comment as to who is raising the most money, who has good standings in what state and who is most likely going to pair up, be left out or fall on his/her face during this presidential race. One thing is for certain though, the stakes are high this year and both sides are striving for new ways to gain the attention on the younger generation.

During every campaign though, fanatics and die-hard supporters appear doing their best to present the world with their view of the candidates – such is the case with Peter Leyden. Mr. Leyden has recently taken it upon himself to recreate the 1984 popular Apple commercial, who’s basic message was that Apple was going to be coming out with a new computer that would change the way people look at computers. In his commercial Mr. Leyden substitutes the symbols representing IBM computer for Democratic, New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, portraying her as the “Big Brother” figure in the commercial, leaving the implication of Barak Obama being the person who comes in “frees the zombielike followers” (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/MNGHNONEPS1.DTL).

Though it was not funded by Barak Obama or his campaign, it is these types of commercials that could have the capability to change the way the nation view’s these political candidates. The website www.youtube.com is a video publishing site that allows anyone to anonymously post a video, or a link to a video, that is made available to anyone in the world to see. This capability is not only leading to new forms of advertising, but it is also giving way for regular people to bash, criticize and publicly speak out against those people they don’t like.

Experts fear that this freedom could lead to new forms of politically attacking campaign opponents, especially when this homemade commercials leaves the viewers with the following message from the announcer, “"On Jan. 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you'll see why 2008 won't be like 1984.".