A controversial new Hillary Clinton attack ad is causing an Internet stir among critics who claim it deliberately darkens Barack Obama?s skin color.
A posting on the liberal site DailyKos.com shows side-by-side screen grabs of Barack Obama taken during a debate with Clinton in Cleveland last week. The screen grab used in the Clinton ad shows a clearly darker-skinned Obama, prompting some to wonder if it was done to highlight his race.
Despite the strong similarities between the ad on the DailyKos site and the original ad on Clinton?s Web site, Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said he spoke with the campaign?s chief ad maker, Mandy Grunwald, who said emphatically the ad on DailyKos ?was not their ad.?
?We don?t know what is up there, but it is not our ad,? Carson said.
However, he said that Obama?s image was darkened, as part of a ?saturation-desaturation? process typical in commercial production and sent in an example of a Clinton ad featuring the candidate and the original footage of Clinton delivering the campaign speech used in the ad. He said both candidates have done it in their ads, and that there was no ulterior motive behind doing so in the campaign?s most recent ad.
One posting on the DailyKos site, though, charged that while darkening footage may be considered standard practice for political ads trying to ?cast the target as sinister,? it is ?not an acceptable excuse.?
?Even if you accept that as normal practice, it?s still a dirty one, and it takes on a more charged meaning when you?re using it to attack someone in your own party who?s already fighting against a lot of racism in the false Muslim smears,? the posting said. ?This is, at best, the worst of politics as usual.?
The Obama campaign had no comment.
Some bloggers immediately compared the case to the infamous 1994 Time magazine cover of O.J. Simpson following his arrest on murder charges. In that case, Time photo editors deliberately darkened a mug shot of Simpson, giving him a much more menacing appearance.
There are a number of commonly used techniques that allow photo and video editors to darken or lighten images. The lighting and tonality can be changed for effect, to highlight some parts of the image or for a variety of other reasons.
The Clinton ad, released Monday in Texas, alleged that Obama was ?too busy? running for president to hold any hearings as chairman of an oversight committee for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
