Rick Perry's attack ad on gays and Obama still up
At 3.2 million viewers, a gay-bashing
campaign ad uploaded to YouTube on Tuesday isn't yet in competition with Justin Bieber or Jennifer Lopez. But it got a lot of attention, mostly from progressives. That's not exactly the audience for whom it was crafted, presumably the bigoted fundi wing of the Republican Party that has drifted all over the place looking for the right right-wing candidate to back in upcoming caucuses and primaries. But even Perry's top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, called it "nuts."
Steven Colbert dissected it, it generated several parodies, including this one and, so far, 481,000 of those 3.2 million viewers have given it the thumbs down at YouTube. Some 12,000 "liked" it. Proving that the anti-gay meme doesn't cut it with the younger generations. And proving that the Perry campaign team doesn't know about turning off the likes-dislike function since you could still vote as this was being written.
The pile-on started when my colleague Chris Bowers posted the news that the ad had garnered 32,000 "dislikes" against some 700 "likes" in its first 24 hours. He encouraged more votes. Within another hour that had risen to 50,000. And it hasn't stopped since. With the total headed for half a million, you can still vote if you haven't already.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. Perry's plans for the White House drapes are toast, so we're having a good laugh at a campaign that's in ashes. But it was fun anyway. If only we could deliver real votes that way.
[UPDATE at 5 PM PT]: Since the screenshot above of Perry's ad was taken at 3:25 PM PT, nearly 20,000 more dislikes have been added, bringing the total to more than half a million.
