GOP Caught In Sexist YouTube Video Brouhaha

gop video

Senate Republicans from the 56th District learned an important lesson this week: Don’t embed just any “funny” video you find on YouTube on your campaign sites. Case in point: The party’s webmaster had posted a video titled Republican Women vs. Democrat Women Monday night that showed a slideshow with photos of famous conservative women like Michelle Malkin, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann to the tune of Tom Jones’ She’s A Lady.

Three minutes into the clip, the music changes to the Baha Men’s Who Let the Dogs Out, accompanied by photos of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and other famous female democratic politicians and journalists. And yes, you guessed it: The photos used didn’t really show the Democrats from their best side. Rosie O’Donnell’s head was even photoshopped on the body of captured terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Republicans on the other hand? Smiling, glowing and showing lots of cleavage.

It didn’t take long for the post to cause a backlash: The Minnesota Independent reported about the video on Tuesday. Mother Jones picked up on it the same day, and the story finally reached the Huffington Post and The Atlantic on Thursday, with Atlantic staff writer Nicole Allan calling the clip “The Most Sexist Ad, Well, Ever.”

The Minnesota GOP has since been busy pointing out that this wasn’t actually a party-endorsed ad, but just something a local webmaster chose to post. That webmaster first defended the clip as something that was intended to “bring a smile to a few peoples faces, and possibly irritate a few others”, but the clip eventually disappeared from the party’s website (screenshot here). Keith Olberman proceeded to call the webmaster “today’s worst person in the world” on his show last night.

Except, maybe he isn’t. It’s a little harder to track down who originally posted the video on YouTube. The site has removed it in response to a copyright claim by Universal Music, which apparently didn’t really appreciate the use of that Baha Men song. However, it looks like the video was a follow-up to a very similar clip that was originally posted on YouTube more than three years ago by a user called NoFearPolitics. Have a look for yourself:

That user announced early this year that he was working on a second edition, asking conservative bloggers for photo submissions. He apparently also emailed the resulting clip around, which led to a number of reposts. Some of these are still up on YouTube — a sign that Universal decided to very specifically block the use of its music in this clip, instead of opting to remove it from YouTube altogether.

Also worth mentioning: A supporter of the Democrats decided to counter NoFearPolitic’s original video with a compilation of her own that features more attractive photos of Demorats. Her choice of Republicans doesn’t seem quite as mean-spirited, but she nonetheless proceeded to ask: “Who’s prettier now?”

Of course, there’s another difference: It doesn’t look like this video ever appeared on an official campaign website.

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