The Daily Background
| [Updated] Exclusive: “Swift Boat” Ad Firm Linked to Viral Videos?
by Arlen Parsa
Wednesday July 18th Update: ABC News has now picked up this story!
I have been contacted by a legal firm representing Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm regarding this post. They have told me that the assertions made in the post below are false, and that SRCP has no connection to any of the YouTube videos posted under the username abrad2345, and that their employee, Amy Bradford, has nothing to do with this as well. I want to personally stress that I have no concrete evidence whatsoever that suggests that either SRCP or Ms Bradford is in any way connected to the matter regarding these YouTube videos, and that any wording in the piece below which suggests that I do have such evidence is not correct. In the sake of openness and transparency, I have opted, for the moment, to leave the post below intact, but please remember that I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the claims made in it. In fact, I suggest if you do choose to read it, you should treat it as something which has been debunked. SRCP says they have nothing to do with it, and I have no choice but to take hem at their word. I apologize for the initial wording in the below post which makes it sound unequivocal that SRCP or Ms Bradford had something to do with this– that was wrong.
Update: see here for more.
-Arlen
An employee of the Republican ad firm responsible for 2004’s controversial “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” advertisements has apparently been producing viral videos which ridicule Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.
The firm, Stevens, Reed, Curcio & Potholm, now works for John McCain’s presidential campaign.
Giuliani “wasn’t afraid to mess with the Haitians,” an unidentified man in the videos says. “If you’ve gotta stick a plunger up somebody’s ass to reduce crime, then you stick a plunger up their ass,” the man, says in an apparent reference to a 1997 incident where New York police officers sodomized a Haitian immigrant with a plunger. Initially, it was believed that the officers involved in the widely-publicized beating had yelled “This is Giuliani-time!” (this claim was later found to be false).
The ads appear to have been created and posted on YouTube by SRCP’s production manager, Amy Bradford, under the alias abrad2345. Bradford, who describes herself as “Coulter-esque” also linked to the ads from on her MySpace profile, claiming to have discovered them on another website.
“I saw [this ad] on the National Review Corner blog, but then I found out that it played on the liberalista blogs like Wonkette, too,” Bradford wrote. Bradford was distributing the ads online as early as July 4th, shortly after they were first posted to YouTube. A review of The National Review Online’s The Corner blog finds that it did not post the first ad until two days later, on July 6th (the second ad was posted on the 9th). Wonkette did not post either of the ads until July 5th.
SRCP’s online staff biography of the 24 year old Bradford says she “plays a key role in the creation and production of the advertising campaigns and she is involved in all phases of the production process.”
Stevens, Reed, Curio & Potholm worked for Senator McCain’s unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2000, and, although they do not openly advertise the fact on their website as they do for other clients, began advising McCain’s second campaign for the White House earlier this year. McCain, who had once called the notorious Swift Boat ads “dishonest and dishonorable,” hired SRCP in January, even before officially stepping into the race. The four-term senator has yet to run any television spots, leading some to wonder exactly what services the controversial media firm has been providing.
A January 19th press release from the McCain campaign merely said the firm had been hired as “media consultants.”
The ads are made in an amateur style and feature a man driving down the street talking, with the camera held by an offscreen passenger in the car. However, both videos end with very slick-looking graphics flashing across the screen, characteristic of professional ads created with high-end video editing software. SRCP brags on its website that it is “one of the few full-service political media firms with in-house production services, including state-of-the- art edit suites,” and Bradford mentions having an affinity for one particular high-end video editing system on her MySpace profile.
The ads are satirical in manner and at first appear to endorse Giuliani (whom they describe as “unattractive”), but in the end mock all the top-tier candidates except for McCain (whose military service is brought up, briefly). Becoming, something of an internet sensation, they have been viewed more than 30,000 times combined and featured on popular conservative and liberal blogs.
One of the ads seems to question the sexual orientation of certain GOP candidates.
“Mitt Romney, now that’s a good looking man,” the character in the videos says. “Him and Fred Thompson. Now that’s an attractive gay couple.” The character also makes fun of Mitt Romney’s religion and suggests that Thompson’s wife is transgender.
Kathryn Jean Lopez, who writes for The Corner, wrote that “The Giuliani campaign should really make known that it wants that YouTube guy to stop making it look like he’s doing an official (albeit amateurish) ad for their campaign…Picking on a candidate’s religion and another’s wife isn’t what you want associated with your campaign.”
In an ironic stroke, Bradford posted the first of the videos, called “Real Balls,” (which makes light of Giuliani’s bout with prostate cancer) to the former New York City mayor’s official MySpace profile on Independence day, asking if it was an “official” video. A Giuliani staffer responded on Bradford’s profile the next day saying merely “We love that video! :)”
Bradford did not respond to a request for comment.
Additional research conducted by Carlson Petit.
Watch: Rudy Giuliani- Real Balls
Watch: Rudy Giuliani- Not a Mormon
bs. the guy in the vid is doing an improv and that hideous strawman portrayal could only
flow from a progressive.
i mean, anyone searching for “guliani” on any lefty site will be delivered the lurid
narrative of justin volpe’s rape and torture of abner louima “all ‘cuza guliani”. indeed
lefties looking for guliani info are looking for precisely that.
conservatives don’t know anything about any of that - they know he’s wobbly on abortion.
this is an attack ad of course. it’s from the left. it’s similar to the rash of anti-fred
thompson sites which sprung up the day after the dnc sent the e-mail to their membership
announcing their “stop the act” campaign. a couple of these sites run on the concern troll
model, claiming to be authored from an “old-style conservative” perspective.
you have not demonstrated any link between this vid and the ad agency you’re talking about.
that is: none. in fact, reading the monopolitical selection of “daily readings” in the
sidebar of your blog, it seems to me that your connection of the two is inspired by an
enduring obcession with the “swift boat veterans for truth” campaign and the democrat loss
in 2004.
in fact, when i saw the ad on youtube and saw “brad” in the name, i immediately thought “bradblog”; or some joint production with jesus’ general. after all, this “amy bradford” only does audio production, while [This part of the sentence has been redacted to conceal personal information about the author of this blog, which the author of this comment for some reason thought was appropriate to mention. The rest of the comment is left intact however.]
some information here is duplicated from the youtube thread. specifically, an attempt is
made to alege that the video recieved an approving nod from “the official” guliani campaign
myspace. i piointed out there that there is no such thing as an “official” myspace for the
guliani campaign. the “guliani staffer” in your strained conspiracy theory does not appear
to be any more “official” than the schmuck who runs the edwards kisk in second life is an
“edwards staffer”.
you’re a liar arlen. shame on you.
why is it that progressives prefer deception to discourse?
Whoa, jummy, take a chill pill. me thinks thou dost protest too much. You’ve been commenting all over the place trying to discredit this story which only makes me think that maybe you’re the one who started the videos. (whoever smelt it, delt it?) hmmmm….
as for Mr. Parsa’s main point that there’s a link between the Myspace profile (which he attributes to Amy Bradford) and Stephens, Reed, et al., I don’t know how he first figured it out, but once you look at it, it’s really not much of a stretch. The person on that profile says she works at “SRCP” and most of her favorite places she mentions are in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.
For example, she mentions the Torpedo Factory (which is at 105 N. union st.), and Pat Troy’s bar (Christ, she even knows about their Reagan Corner!). Guess where SRCP is? right in the heart of Old Town, jummy, at 201 N. Union st. Those of us who live in the DCarea know that people who work in Old Town, drink in Old Town. It’s not rocket science. But Coincidence? sure, I suppose that’s possible.
but Jummy himself (at his rather lengthy diatribe on HotAir.com; boy this guy has a lot of time on his hands) establishes that ‘Public Persuasion’ (the Myspace-cadet in question) probably started the videos (ok, so you’re AGREEing with Parsa now?)
Just because Bradford (or giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe one of her coworkers at SRCP) is pimping the videos and likely created them doesn’t EXACTLY mean that McCain knowingly approved the ads. but his campaign’s been in such disarray that’s hardly a stretch to think that a zealous employee at one of his consultants would try a hail Mary in the death throes of the campaign.
As for Jummy’s insistence that this so-called official Giuliani myspace page isn’t official, that’s immaterial. the profile is called www.myspace.com/rudolphwgiuliani and has over 6500 friends. If it’s not actually official, it sure as hell is the defacto official Giuliani site. Giuliani may be a fascist to liberals and liberal to rightwingers, but no one would argue that he’s an idiot. Your telling me with a straight face that ANY candidate in today’s world WOULDN’T have any presence on Myspace??? If this page isn’t ‘official’ in the strictest sense of the word, with that many friends, it sure as heck has the tacit approval of the Giuliani campaign. So the fact that it would approve of the fake Giuliani ads — no matter who made them — is worth noting.
The way guys like jummy argue, there could be a million culprits behind these ads. in his HotAir commentary, he suggests that it could be this dude PhilEBinson, whose MySpace page reads like a primer on how to be a young Republican in the DC area (was in Navy ROTC, was a member of College Republicans at Cornell and works as a consultant at Booz Allen). The guy’s a frickin’ counter-terrorism expert, for pete’s sake, and you’re implicating HIM in these ads, just because he maybe went on a date with our Amy Bradford? how this leads you to ALSO believe that our Mr. Parsa is also implicated, I strain to see the plausibility.
For that matter, you might look at the mysterious Amy Bradford’s page and deduce that since the only thing she actively links to is her favorite blog by Debbie Schlussel, that Ms. Schlussel is somehow responsible for these videos (a right wing, self-important wanna be pundit). uh, well, maybe…?
sometimes the simplest answer is the one right in front of you. a lowlevel staffer at a Republican consultant firm tried to do a stealth campaign, and she got found out because she didn’t do that good of a job covering her tracks. good work, Mr. Parsa.
“arlen”,
how is the fact that you are a “documentary film student at columbia college,” with access to “high-end video editing software” and “state-of-the- art edit suites,†“personal information” when you put it in your by-line at truthout?
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012407F.shtml
“foursquare”,
i spent a couple hours on it; more for the benefit of a gop base too prepared to believe anything about mccain, and a timy fraction of the time and effort which went into engeneering it. in fact, considering what i posted at hotair was mostly cut and paste, i’d say you’ve now spent more time on it than i; on “mr. parsa’s behalf,” as it were.
for those who want to read what i actually wrote at hotair.com: http://hotair.com/archives/2007/07/13/is-mccain-responsible-for-the-giuliani-real-balls-attack-ad/
mr. “parsa” indeed “attributes” the myspace profile, allong with the rest of the scheme to amy bradford, without evidence. why, i could just as credibly attribute the entire thing to “alan parsa”!
but the point is that, to the extent that he knows that attribution is false, assertions like, “…Bradford posted the first of the videos…” constitute libel.
[…] longtime readers who remember the saga, here’s a new abrad2345 video. The license plate that flashes about halfway through is a DC […]
[…] Another mysterious new abrad2345 video has surfaced, this time about General Petraeus’ report, um, sort of. Also, I just realized that abrad’s profile is now linking to Justin Rood’s ABC News piece about them. Interestingggg. Background on this whole saga can be found here. […]
[…] ABC News and The New York Times starting looking into who was behind the ads, they linked them to a consulting company that had been responsible for the infamous Swift Boat ads from the 2004 campaign. Naturally, that […]
Did you ever find out which agency did the swift boat ads? They’re coming back again, and i intend to expose them in Adweek. I believe that, if they are so proud of their work, they should be recognized by their peers!
Excellent site - do keep up the good work.>