Meg Whitman recently unleashed her first ad against Jerry Brown in their race for the governorship of California. Unfortunately for Whitman, it appears the ad is full of photo manipulation. Case in point, Ben Huh, the owner and founder of FailBlog, has requested an apology from the Whitman campaign for spoofing his site in the ad and using it to further their proposition that Brown is “fail” personified.
We all know that sites like FailBlog routinely feature pictures and/or videos that the general public will find humorous and labels them as “fail.” But these are real pictures and real videos. Is it really fair of Whitman to spoof the site with Brown’s picture and thereby make the viewer think that he was once listed on the site? No, not really. What about the newspapers featured in the commercial. These appear to be fake, with fake headlines also touting Brown’s failures. But if none of the images and clippings in the commercial can be counted on as being real, then what about the facts?
I’m not registered to vote in California, since I don’t live there. But I can guarantee one thing…if I was, I would do my own fact checking instead of relying on Whitman and her advertising campaign to tell me the facts. And you can bet with her eBay millions and fundraising efforts, this won’t be the last manipulation coming out of the Whitman camp.
So what was the Whitman team’s response to the accusation by Huh and the request for an apology? You’re going to love this …
Jerry Brown owned failure 35 years before FailBlog launched its website. The only entity with an ownership stake in failure is Jerry Brown Incorporated.
In case you haven’t seen the offensive commercial, check it out below. The FailBlog spoof appearance takes place around the 50 second point in the video.
