Tidal Wave of Indignation

Paraphrasing Phoebe Eaton, in the New York Times:

The web-based Bush-bashing group MoveOn.org announced a contest last October for homemade 30-sec TV commercials "challenging" the Bush administration. Move.On intends to show the winner during the week of Bush's State of the Union address in January. (Click here to see the whole article.)

The spots came rolling it by the hundreds and hundreds, mostly attached to email messages. Clever, inventive, amateurish at times, amazingly polished occasionally, marked by "the inflamed passions of street rallies" and often featuring scores of regular Americans in speaking parts (skewing to the 20-something age group), this out-pouring of thought was being dismissed by Republican Party operatives as "an insult-the-president home-movie contest."

Some 1,017 of the ads have been posted by MoveOn at www.bushin30seconds.org. It's entertaining. You get to watch & rate the ads.

(You have to register on bushin30seconds.org -- simple -- and you must have QuickTime or other video-viewing software on your computer -- also simple. You'll get a prompt to download the necessary program. It's free.)

In the first hour of public polling on the ads on Dec. 17th, more than 5,700 votes were logged. So many people visited the site that MoveOn, experiencing bandwidth problems, limited viewers to 20 ads a day.

"Founded five years ago to oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, MoveOn.org became a catalyst for demonstrations earlier this year, and subsequently raised more than $7 million from 133,000 donors to oppose Mr. Bush's policies. Last month two billionaire philanthropists, George Soros and Peter B. Lewis, announced they would match contributions to the group up to $5 million between them."