Satire, Civility and Democracy

Many in the blogging community and the mainstream media have reported on a flash cartoon produced by Jibjab Productions.  The video shows cartoon versions of President Bush and challenger John Kerry dancing and singing along to Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."  Both candidates are sniping at each other calling their opponents "right-wing nut jobs" and "left-wingweenies."  Unlike the scum from Moveon.org, this cartoon is hysterical, even-handed and makes people remember that politics shouldn't be about calling each other Nazis.  The most hysterical aspect of the story is that the holder of the Guthrie copyrights (not the Woody Guthrie estate, as Base10 previously thought) is suing the operators of Jibjab for copyright infringement.  Gregg and Evan Spiridellis, the brothers behind Jibjab, have stated that their position is that the political use of this song comes under the fair use doctrine. 

While the final message of the cartoon is sort of "Why can't we all just get along?" and it reminds us that maybe we should lighten up on all the vitriol.  Unfortunately, this message seems to have been lost on Theresa Heinz-Kerry.  The candidate for First Lady recently told a reporter to "Shove it!" when she was asked to clarify her comments to the Pennsylvania delegation to the DNC.  Ironically, her remarks were about bringing more civility into political dialoges.


- posted by Base10 @ 10:05 AM