I’ve spent a lot of time this morning looking at the GOP’s surprisingly clever website,Not Ready ’08, which is, not surprisingly, all about attacking Barack Obama’s lack of “executive experience.” I have to say, for a party who has a history of being so anachronistically computer illiterate, they sure have a handle on this whole Web 2.0 thing.
By far, the best of the mini-sites is BarackBook, a send-up of Facebook dedicated to highlighting some of the particularly dubious aspects of Obama’s social network. It’s pretty ingenious, even going so far as to borrow the concept and icons from the feed, and mirroring the basic layout of the site. It makes me wonder how they could get away with this…seems like Facebook had to have licensed some general look and feel components to the GOP since it looks so damn similar. I think this is exceedingly clever, and I confess: I took a lot of joy in browsing around the site, looking at profiles for the likes of Kwame Kilpatrick and Bill Ayers. I hate to admit it, but this site does everything right– from illustrating social networks that go beyond just Barack (Ayers, for instance, is linked with Marilyn Katz and Rashid Khalidi) to an exhaustive list of related articles and quotes. Way to step into the 21st Century, GOP.
Given that facebook is suing other clones, it seems to only further prove that the GOP hasn’t a clue.