Clay Shirky says "Dear Mr. Obama" was the most "affecting" video of the campaign.

Per Shirky:

I am an anti-Iraq-war Democrat, and it nevertheless brought tears to my eyes (and I don't cry easy -- will.i.am's Yes We Can left me fairly cold.)...

This is a video made by people who knew exactly what they were doing. Stuff like the American flag draped just in frame looks hokey to the godless/ sodomite/ baby-killing wing of the Democratic party (my people), but is part of a "plain speaking and right thinking" package that clearly hit just right with the target audience. It was seen 13 million times in 3 months, which topped Obama Girl in absolute views, and I've got a Crush...on Obama was up a year and a half.

This is why this video is really really important: the simple message and Blair Witch production values (good enough to be effective, bad enough to seem unplanned) made this video like Democratic kryptonite. The video was largely circulated via homophilous forwarding along conservative channels.

By the way, it was "homophilously" forwarded to me many times, and, though I posted many videos, from different sides, I chose not to post that one. Shirky notes that few of his students (in NYU media studies) had seen that video, and, basically, it wasn't meant for them. It was the perfect viral video:

For the base, a muscular but polite attack on the very issue that brought Obama into the spotlight. For the undecided, the emotional charge is much likelier to sway them than argumentation. And for the Dems -- nothing. The video might as well not have existed for all it was seen in Democratic circles. Since the video's sole speaker can't be criticized without making the criticizer look churlish at best, almost no Dems forwarded it, linked to it, talked about it.

That is, it couldn't be used in a negative way by McCain's opponents, so it didn't backfire, as many videos do: "Dear Mr. Obama was music to Republican ears while being inert in Democratic hands." Bottom line: "expect it to be a template for 2010."

IN THE COMMENTS: Freeman Hunt said...

I had never seen this video before. I must be odd. While I agree with the guy, I don't find the video affecting. Or maybe I'm not odd and Shirky is wrong.

Interesting. Me too: I agreed with the man in the video, but he didn't play my heartstrings. He was stating the obvious as far as I was concerned, and the revelation of the prosthetic leg did not change anything for me. Whether he had lost a limb or not, I know plenty of others have. There is no new information or argument, just an emotional appeal that works if you've somehow failed to know the most basic things about the war.

So then, perhaps the interesting question is: Why did Shirky cry? The video was, in his view, "inert" for people like him. I think he means only that war opponents felt like suppressing it because they perceived it as having the power to generate support for the war. But he may be quite wrong about that, since he is imagining the effect on people who don't think the way he does. And it may be that war opponents tend to be people who react very strongly to the sight of physical injuries -- to the point where emotion gets the better of reason. In that case, the video is not inert, and it could be used for the anti-war cause, the way any war injury and death is used.