"Hillary 1984" video creator exposed and fired; He was an employee of tech firm working for Obama

[jefferson_dem]

...

Statement from Thomas Gensemer, Managing Director, Blue State Digital

This afternoon, an employee at our firm, Phillip de Vellis, received a call from Arianna Huffington of "The Huffington Post" regarding the "1984" video currently circulating online. Initially, de Vellis refused to respond to her requests. He has since acknowledged to Blue State Digital that he was the creator of the video.

Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise, Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately.

Blue State Digital is under contract with the Obama Campaign for technology pursuits including software development and hosting. Additionally, one of our founding partners is on leave from the company to work directly for the campaign at headquarters.

However, Blue State Digital is not currently engaged in any relationship with the Obama Campaign for creative or non-technical services.

Mr. de Vellis created this video on his own time. It was done without the knowledge of management, and was in no way tied to his work at the firm or our formal engagement with the Obama campaign.

I have spoken with David Plouffe, Sen. Obama's campaign manager, to inform him of this action and am appreciative of his understanding and ongoing support of our work.

We wish Mr. de Vellis well in his future endeavors.

http://www.bluestatedigital.com/2007/03/on_the_1984_video.html

[ShortnFiery]

1. Watch some Republican Operative "Make him an offer" n/t

[medeak]

2. can someone tell Chris Matthews?

he seemed to think today that it was a legit campaign commercial.

[opihimoimoi]

3. Hillary gets a $4 million boost last night partially because of the ad...

Ironic....

[quinnox]

4. wow, harsh

Maybe Obama didnt like this or something, good for him.

[robinlynne]

5. that ad was on Du 2 weeks ago. Why did it take them this long?

[ElizabethDC]

6. B/c the MSM didn't find out about it until 2 days ago

Or it least they didn't report on it until then. I have no idea what took them so long.

[Pirate Smile]

7. The media didn't pay attention to it until it went up on Drudge - pathetic.

It was posted on Talking Points Memo on March 5th. It went around the liberal blogs for weeks and the Corp media ignored it.

It proves they do take their talking points from Drudge.

Matt Drudge Posts 1984-Style Anti-Hillary Video; Networks Jump

March 20, 2007 -- 05:19 PM EST // link // Comments (27)
You don't need convincing, I'm sure, but here's still more evidence (channeling Mark Halperin) that the slogan of the big networks should be:

Matt Drudge Rules Our World, Because We Happily Let Him Do Just That
Yesterday, most of the major networks lavished coverage on the "controversial" 1984-style video that slams Hilllary Clinton by taking footage of her speaking and putting it in a 1984-ish context. Via Nexis, ABC News, CNN, and NBC Nightly News all covered it, even though it's, well, really not all that newsworthy.

Why now? As Ben Smith notes, this video has been making the rounds for at least two solid weeks. It was being written about as early as March 6. What changed?

Here's what changed: The networks' assignment editor, Matt Drudge, told them that it was important. I went back and checked, and yep -- Drudge posted it late Sunday evening. Within 24 hours, CNN, NBC and ABC had all responded to Drudge's call for coverage. Funnily enough, I can't find a single example on Nexis of any of those same networks saying anything about this before Drudge told them to. Had reporters and producers at these networks not heard of it before late Sunday evening? Almost certainly not.

Ultimately, what's really amusing about this is that the networks' mindless willingness to take their cues from Drudge is far more Ridley Scott and George Orwell than anything this video tries to say about Hillary.


Update: Media Matters notes that a San Francisco newspaper wrote about this on March 17 -- so, no, there's virtually no doubt that reporters and editors at the major networks knew about this but didn't think it was important until Drudge told them it was.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/03/matt_drudge_com.php#comments