Paging Al Rodgers.
Al, I love your gorgeous posts. Your post yesterday The Palins are UnAmerican Subversives/Traitors grabbed my attention and held it till dawn. At first, I was grabbed by the video... but after playing it, I saw it's YouTube title was "Palin Smear Video Backup"... and that struck me as kinda weird.
I got suspicious, so I dug in, and found that the instance of the video you linked to was posted by people who are definitely not our friends. In fact, they have been waging a vendetta against the maker of the video!
The version of the video you linked to is titled as a "smear" because there are wingnuts who are preserving it as evidence of a "conspiracy" against Palin. That is why their title is "Palin Smear Video Backup".
Below the fold is lots of research: backstory on the wingers declaring war on this ad, how they intimidated the maker of the ad (all the way to getting him to remove the master from YouTube), how we can fix this and reviralize properly.... plus fact checking on the ad, and how the ad can be cleaned up and made ready for TV airing.
See for yourself --
The poster of your version of the video, and ringleader of the winger vendetta is:
http://www.youtube.com/...
Here's one of his blog posts trying to pin the ad on the Obama campaign:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/...
The maker of the ad takes full responsibility for the ad, but was intimidated by the level of harassment... and pulled his ad off of YouTube:
http://www.patterico.com/...
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So, lets try to fix the virality that your diary unleashed yesterday.
Let's first of all get this out, possibly by your editing the top part of your diary:
PLEASE DO NOT LINK TO THEIR VERSION OF THE VIDEO!!!
PLEASE DO NOT DIGG THEIR VERSION OF THE VIDEO!!!
PLEASE DO NOT VIRALIZE THEIR VERSION OF THE VIDEO!!
INSTEAD:
Here's a copy of the video, from a friendly YouTube account, appropriately entitled:
Todd & Sarah Palin: secessionist Alaska Independence Party involvement
http://www.youtube.com/...
People can link to that instance of the video, or embed it, and then won't be sending their viewers into a spinzone that says the video is a "smear" and then talks trash about it and its maker and us and our cause.
Better yet, spread the word to grab a copy of the video, and put it on your own YouTube account. In this case, the more places it lives, the better.
Use a service like vidgrab.com to grab a copy of the .flv file, and then upload the .flv to your own YouTube account.
This link will download the good .flv for you:
http://www.vidgrab.com/...
The more places have copies, the harder it will be for the wingnuts to threaten or suppress. If you think that is a bit paranoid, consider the following letter from the maker of the video:
Statement of Ethan Winner
The following is in response to questions I have received regarding the post on the Jawa Report website.
I produced and posted on the Internet the video entitled "Sarah Palin: A Heartbeat Away."
The idea for the video was mine. No one paid me to produce it. The only out-of-pocket cost will be the fee for the voice-over narrator, which I will pay personally when I receive an invoice. Contrary to the allegation in the Jawa Report, the voice-over artist has never done any work for the Obama campaign. I retained her through a talent agency based solely on the quality of her voice.
Neither the Obama campaign nor any independent political action committee has had a connection with the making and/or posting of this video. Just like the thousands of Americans who have posted videos on the Internet regarding the current Presidential campaign, I produced this video as an expression of my right to free speech, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
I believe the American people have a right and a need to know information about candidates for political office and their views. I made this video because I think it is important for the public to be aware of the association between Sarah and Todd Palin and the Alaskan Independence Party. The New York Times has reported that the Alaskan Independence Party website describes the party as seeking, in the words of the party, "a range of solutions to the conflicts between federal and local authority," including "advocacy for state's rights, through a return to territorial status, all the way to complete independence and nationhood status for Alaska."
While a number of media outlets have said that reports that Sarah Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence Party may have been erroneous, her attendance at the party's 1994 convention, her video speech to the 2008 convention and her husband's membership in the Alaskan Independence Party have not been called into question.
Some people have asked why I have pulled the video from the Internet. The reason is simple. Following the posting of personal information about me by the Jawa Report, my family began to receive threatening and abusive phone calls and emails.
The above was found at:
http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/...
which in general is a pretty nasty blog, other than his request for fellow wingnuts to stop harassing Ethan Winner (after previously revealing Winner's personal identity and contact info, and thus originally enabling the harassment).
Worse yet, home-video-editing-challenged Rusty Shackleford (blog owner) finds it unbelievable that a video of this quality could be made by a mere citizen ("lone gunman" as he puts it), and so he and his minions have been pursuing the theory that the Obama campaign must have therefore been behind it.
Since we at dKos have harvested a good crop of 1-person produced broadcast quality videos this season (cartwrightdale comes to mind), we know that it is certainly possible, and doable, and some of us have done such "lone gunman" video productions. BUT it is NOT ok to allow wingnuts to harass our grassroots video makers, or suppress our freespeech, or spin false conspiracy theories, or intimidate our folks to the point that they feel they have to pull down their YouTube videos.
OTOH, we would all be well advised to err slightly on the side of prudence, check our facts, and back up all of our claims. Our message will be much stronger that way. Many of the comments to this diary center on the debate over exactly where to draw that line. Yet none of them seem to be aware of the drama that has already played out over this video during the past few weeks.
The video, as is, deserves to get out to our world, and not get lost. But for anybody who wants to go on TV with this ad, some editing and/or buttressing may be in order.
Please take note of the Politico spin:
The Jawa Report, which tracked this anti-Palin YouTube to a previously little-known Democratic P.R. guy, and spun a rather vast conspiracy from that, gets a statement from him taking credit for the video, and denying he did it at the Obama campaign's behest. (The slender evidence of an Obama link: The voiceover artist sounds kind of similar to one used by the campaign.)
The P.R. guy, Ethan Winner, emails the Jawas:
I produced and posted on the Internet the video entitled "Sarah Palin: A Heartbeat Away."
The idea for the video was mine. No one paid me to produce it. The only out-of-pocket cost will be the fee for the voice-over narrator, which I will pay personally when I receive an invoice. Contrary to the allegation in the Jawa Report, the voice-over artist has never done any work for the Obama campaign. I retained her through a talent agency based solely on the quality of her voice.
Neither the Obama campaign nor any independent political action committee has had a connection with the making and/or posting of this video. Just like the thousands of Americans who have posted videos on the Internet regarding the current Presidential campaign, I produced this video as an expression of my right to free speech, which is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Some people have asked why I have pulled the video from the Internet. The reason is simple. Following the posting of personal information about me by the Jawa Report, my family began to receive threatening and abusive phone calls and emails.
(His ad is inaccurate: Though it popped up when the Alaska Independence Party was still claiming Palin was a member, documents have since shown she wasn't, though her husband was.)
The episode, to my mind, reflects some of the best and the worst of distributed online journalism: Solid, fact-based reporting that actual answers an open question. But it's driven by theories that just aren't substantiated. And indeed, the reporting probably wouldn't get done if the reporters didn't assume the worst.
In this case, the question answered is basically trivial -- they found a pro-am, in webbie parlance, who produced his own attack ad. In other cases, like that of Sarah Palin's baby, the chase for one alleged prurient secret kicks out another and mostly generates sympathy for the chasee.
And in case you didn't know it, there's no promise of anonymity online.
Here's the in-depth description from the good YouTube instance of the video, including quite a bit of fact checking:
I discovered this excellent video, and then found out that wingnuts were harassing the videomaker and using threats to force them to take down the video off of YouTube. This is America -- stand up for freedom of speech, freedom from harassment! Feel free to download from here and post onto your own YouTube account! Pass this video along!
FACT CHECKING:
Sarah & Todd Palin are secessionists -- they have both been involved with the AIP (Alaska Independence Party). AIP's goal is for Alaska to break away from the US.
Documented, confirmed: during 1995-2002 Todd Palin was a registered member of the Alaskan Independence Party.
Sarah Palin wasn't just palin' around with a registered secessionist -- she'd been sleeping with 'em.
But Sarah has been involved with the AIP herself. She and the McCain campaign have claimed that she is not a "member" and has not been a "member", and used her Republican party registration to back those claims. They intimidated AIP chair Lynette Clark into recanting her claim that Sarah Palin was a "member". BUT multiple other AIP members have claimed that she was a member.
ABC News on September 2, 2008: former AIP official -- Mark Chryson, chairman of the AIP from 1995 to 2002 -- tells ABC News that "Palin was at the convention in 1994. She was there."
There is unequivocal evidence on video that other AIP leaders are certain that Sarah Palin was an AIP member and sympathizer from the time before she was Wasilla mayor.
Dexter Clark, vice chairman of the Alaska Independence party, told party officials in 2006 that: "She was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along -- she eventually joined the Republican Party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won't go into that. She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership."
For video documentation, see:
http://www.youtube.com/...
A McCain spokesman acknowledges that Sarah Palin was at the AIP convention "in Wasilla in 2000 as a courtesy since she was mayor."
Sarah Palin openly acknowledges having campaigned at the AIP convention in 2006.
As Governor she recorded a clearly supportive welcome to the 2008 AIP Convention.
"Your party plays an important role in our states politics ... keep up the good work, and God bless you."
(clips of that 2008 welcome are in the video on this page, as well as in the video linked above)
More evidence:
http://blip.tv/...
Todd, definitely a registered member for over 6 years. Sarah, definitely participating at AIP conventions in 1994, 2000, 2006, and and 2008.
Perhaps Sarah's 2-facedness (or multi-facedness) convinced the AIP'ers that she was a kindred spirit, while in reality she was only a lying opportunist. But the closer we look, especially given Todd's undisputed registered membership, the more it becomes clear that the commonality of belief and aims goes much deeper.
Now we are beginning to see why Palin is so good at saying whatever she's been programmed to say by those behind her -- pathological liar, with much deeper aims than have been made public.
Either way, her being a heartbeat away from the Presidency is an unacceptable risk.
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ESPECIALLY READ THE LAST SECTION:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
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IMPORTANT:
http://firedoglake.com/...
The AIP is clearly a secessionist movement. It had delegates both at the First North American Secession Convention in 2006, but also at the Second North American Secession Convention in 2007 alongside fellow members the League of the South (the most prominent neo-Confederate organization and an SPLC-designated hate group); the Republic of Texas (a militia/Patriot group whose members at one time engaged in an armed standoff with Texas law enforcement); and Christian Exodus (which advocates creating an all-white homeland, either in South Carolina or in Idaho, depending on whos in charge). You can also find links to these groups at AIPs links page.
In other words, this is a group that works alongside acknowledged racists and far-right radicals in pursuit of an agenda that is by definition extremist that is, secession.
Suggested action items:
How about we get all the above to the attention of TruthAndHope.org? dKos users TruthandHope and cartwrightdale seem to be the right folks. Maybe there are some other independent video folks who know the ropes in prepping for broadcast quality and then getting something good on the air.
Perhaps they will be able to get the video and audio track files from Ethan Winner, and do the slight edit of not directly claiming Sarah was a "member" (even tho Todd definitively was a registered member, and Sarah was involved in a variety of ways). Also fix: the AIP founder's name was Vogler, not Vogel.
Of the hundreds and hundreds of dKos diaries I've read, I can't remember a single one so dense with comments saying something like "where do I send my money to get this ad on the air?"
So lets tune this up to meet our high standards of integrity and effectiveness, and ten go out and fry us up some barracuda.
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Update: I guess staying up all night was worth it this time -- it's 7am, and as I was about to finally go off to bed --- y'all put me on the Rec List ! Wow, my very first time!!! (A nice 2008 installment towards my eventual 15 seconds of fame... sure is a great way to help me celebrate my 4 year birthday here at dKos!) Thanks everybody!