Dick Cheney's Alive!

The Institute for Democracy, Politics, and the Internet published a reader called "Under the Radar and Over the Top: Online Political Videos in the 2004 Election."

The basic idea of the document is to show while the mainstream media focused on the positive aspects of technology in the 2004 Presidential election, there was a negative and more harsh mud-slinging side they weren't reporting on happening online.

I found this little nugget to be verrrrrry interesting:

According to comScore Media Metrix, 10.4 million unique visitors visited the JibJab Web site in July, more visitors than viewed the Web sites of the two presidential candidates combined.

Of course, JibJab created the infamous 'This Land' parody of Bush and Kerry during the campaign.

Personally, I still love to watch Dick Cheney's Alive from time to time. Once you get past the boring beginning the video is hilarious. The music alone should have won an award!

As far as this underscore of negative political discourse online goes, it is just the same old talk but in a new generation of usability. Partisan bickering has gone on since the founding of this country - we are just hearing more of it because, well, with the internet we can.

Besides, we all know that these negative attacks are like car wrecks - you know you really shouldn't look but for some reason you end up doing it anyway.