I’m back – after a few days hiatus.  This one will be of interest to all you Facebook friends.

You know a communication medium has officially made it when you begin to see political attack ads being sponsored and purchased within it’s purview.

EMILY STEEL reports in an article for the Wall Street Journal, titled FACEBOOK POLITICAL ADS TEST LIMITS, that the notorious Moveon.org has started the practice of purchasing ad links on Facebook made to appear as legitimate news story posts.

Read below:

“AP Says: Palin Lied,” reads one ad, accompanied by an unflattering photo of the vice presidential candidate. Another ad — accompanied by the same photo — reads, “Washington Post breaks ANOTHER Palin scandal. Charging tax payers for her sleeping at home.” Another with a picture of John McCain grimacing reads, “Time’s Joe Klein has had enough of McCain’s dishonorable campaign lies. A must read.”

Clicking on the ads takes visitors straight to a story on the Web sites of those publications. People who click on the ad that reads “WSJ Says: Palin Lied,” for instance, are directed to a story on The Wall Street Journal Web site about the contradictions in Gov. Palin’s record regarding the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

But none of the publications cited in the ads bought them — or even was aware of them. The buyer — though never identified anywhere on the ads or on the pages that you land on after clicking on them — is the liberal group MoveOn.org. It’s the latest example of fuzziness about who’s behind what when it comes to political ads online.

I support political communications on social networking sites. Where there is speech there is debate and that is good for a democracy.  If we limit speech in budding communication mediums, we will be forever doomed to mediocrity and meaningless chatter.

However, this form of misleading communication is dangerous and wrong.

Proper and reasonable notification of whom is responsible for any political communication is absolutely necessary.  Any medium where mass communication is accepted, and paid political communication is present there must be proper disclosure.

Otherwise, people and will be subjected to harmful, misleading and slanderous claims that are irreversible.

Faceless groups and movements can appear to morph into any halfway legitimate entity and lay false claims intended to mislead people – This is exactly what Moveon.org is doing.  

They are hiding behind the tiny legal exception given to groups or candidate committees so that they do not have place a long silly disclaimer on pens and other small knick knacks.

They are also heading down a path, which will open up a Pandora’s box of veiled Facebook attacks, undoubtedly leading to an FEC ruling or some other government action to limit it or force disclosure.  This is what happened with mail and television commercials that were sponsored by smear groups in the ’80’s and ’90’s, which led to forced strict disclosure giving us the awkward disclaimers you see and hear at the beginning and end of TV spots.

Groups like Moveon.org always test the limits of political messaging, in attempt to mask their identity.

Why? Because their identity is meaningless, and in some cases, very negative in the minds of average Americans. They don’t represent businesses, union members, or people with one legislative agenda.  They are a group that was created on fighting Republicans.

They have a right to exist and communicate, but they continue to force needless action against other groups in the political arena because of their hidden agenda.

Below is a new RNC web video as parody of Barack Obama’s visit and speech in Germany.  I must say this is pretty poorly done stuff.  I would expect a lot more from the RNC when it comes to output of media such as this.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am of the view that web videos are best when produced as less-scripted,  more natural, longer form media.  Web videos allow the producer to tell a longer story, get to a punch line in more time and generally carry a more interesting plot line than the basic 30 or 60 second broadcast spot.

However, there is a fine line between funny and sophisticated and not really funny and totally unsophisticated.  I would expect the leadership of the Republican Party would attempt at the former in all instances.  

I ask who does this video truly serve?  McCain’s line of attack on Obama regarding his snub of American troops during his trip abroad was smart and very relevant.  Humorous portrayals of John Kerry’s flip flops in 2004 were playful and funny – tugging at a nagging weakness of his.  The video above – not so much.

I would say the RNC did have some good footage to work with from video taken at this event.  There is something to be said for Che supporters and Marxists who adore Barack Obama – insert liberal loony left.  I simply would have opted to spend more time and money to produce a smarter video. You can either hit the viewer over the head with message or subtly point the viewer in the direction of message – but under the party banner, do it with a little more style.  

I point to the video below, produced by Moveon.org, while I have my criticism there also, it still was very smartly done by individual(s) that sculpted a media piece out of creative sarcasm.

MOVEON.ORG, never short on creativity, just released this spot about…well…”Hope”…I guess.

Moveon.org definitely creates buzz and conversation about their spots.  And they’re never shy on making a splash.  However, this spot, like so many, fails to convey a succinct message.  Unlike Moveon’s Alex spot, which hammered home a strong message about McCain and his position on Iraq, this spot appears to do nothing except to simply be creative for the sake of creativity.

In the political theater, creativity as an ends is not enough.  Unless the objective is to simply make a splash, pure creativity rarely justifies political ad dollars.

Politics is about persuasion and action.  Political advertising serves a very important role in the context of American politics.  It allows individuals and organizations the power to use speech to provide context and perspective for voters to make educated choices.  The best vehicles for this speech do two very important things: 1. display truth 2. effectively get a point across that affects a voter’s decision.  

Moveon.org’s Hope: It Could Happen To You, doesn’t do anything other than create humor and appeal to the younger set.  If helping Obama is their objective, then this weapon hardly accomplishes this.  If it’s to be creative – then this ad is perfect.