Who is the person behind the Clinton attack ad?

Just who is ParkRidge47 the mystery figure who introduced an Internet political attack ad that has stirred the press and political junkies tuned into the early presidential campaign and what does the videomaker have against Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton?

The political question of the week is the identity of the anonymous person who reworked the classic 1984 ad introducing the Apple Macintosh computers to the world into a biting attack piece against Clinton and posted it on the popular YouTube Web site.

The video portrays "Hillary 1984" as an ominous Big Brother figure while portraying her rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, as the symbol of a new generation. Obama's campaign maintains it had nothing to do with the video.

There are some clues to the identity of the person behind the sophisticated political remix of Ridley Scott's original Apple computer ad a so-called video "mashup." Analysts have said the video is representative of the multiplying power and democracy of the Internet and is a harbinger of a brave new era of unauthorized "viral" political ads made by individuals working independently of campaigns and consultants.

The ad was first placed on the YouTube site on March 5 by an anonymous poster signed ParkRidge47, a signature that appears to be a clever jab at the New York senator, who was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1947 and raised in nearby Park Ridge.

After the ad received more than 100,000 hits in two days, Micah Sifrey, editor of TechPresident.com, a Web site that tracks how the Internet is changing politics, sent an e-mail to the poster, asking for more information about how and why the ad was created.

ParkRidge47 wrote back, saying that the "Hillary 1984" ad, which urged Americans to "Vote Different," was inspired by Hollywood movie mogul David Geffen's public critique of Clinton and "Clinton's campaign bullying of donors and political operatives" in the wake of it, according to Sifrey's Web posting.

In the response to Sifrey, ParkRidge47 said that the idea for the ad "was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn't register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord."

A chord indeed: Sifrey noted in a telephone interview Monday that, after a story Sunday in The Chronicle and resulting coverage in the media, the ad had more than quadrupled its hits to 400,000 giving the pro-Obama message far more exposure than any other political ad or site by other presidential candidates on the Web. Obama, asked about the video Monday on "Larry King Live" on CNN, said his campaign knew nothing about it until the ad popped up on the Web.

"In some ways, it's the democratization of the campaign process, but it's not something that we had anything to do with or were aware of and that, frankly, given what it looks like, we don't have the technical capacity to create something like this. It's pretty extraordinary," Obama told King.

One possible reason its creator is staying silent for now: The ad could be a victim of its own success and raise potential questions of copyright infringement.

Steve Dowling, corporate spokesman for Apple reached Monday by The Chronicle, said he did not know who produced the political video and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the firm's reaction or whether it was considering legal action.

But E. Floyd Kvamme who helped bring the original "1984" ad to Super Bowl viewers when he was vice president of sales and marketing for Apple Computers said he wouldn't be surprised if the company took action.

"They've always been very protective about their image," said Kvamme, now a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, key technology adviser to the Bush administration and a supporter of Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.

San Francisco adman Bob Gardner, whose political ads for California candidate for attorney general Chuck Poochigian were the subject of creative remixes that made their way to late-night comedy shows, said the Hillary "viral" spot can be argued to be the realm of political parody and is unlikely to be successfully challenged in the courts.

Although Sifrey notes that ParkRidge47 posted the spot but cannot be verified as its creator the comments on the TechPresident.com site suggest pride of authorship: "Thank you for your interest in the video.

It has been amazing to watch it explode on the viral scene," ParkRidge47 wrote. Alluding to the video's huge number of Web hits, the poster says "considering Hillary Clinton's biggest video has only received 12,000 views on YouTube, I'd say the grassroots has won the first round."

SFGate.com