Contending that negative political ads have "taken dirty to a whole new level,"
CNN's Anderson Cooper is reaching for his smelling salts. But as Reason documents, political attack ads even dirtier than the ones which horrify Cooper are "as American as apple pie." (That reminds me of a post in which I pointed out an astonishing fact: that Saul Alinsky did not invent political ridicule!)

Ridicule and political attack ads might not be pleasant, but they are at least honest in the sense that it usually doesn't take a genius or a political junkie to determine who they're for and who they're against. Ordinary voters might not like the ads (and thus they can backfire), but in general, if a candidate is being accused of having an affair or cheating on his taxes, the voters can fairly assume that the dirt was dug up and disseminated by his opponent (or by his opponent's supporters.)

The process might be dirty, and if the dirty allegations are false, it might also be dishonest, but hell, at least it's traditional, and people know how to deal with it.

Modern technology, though, has added a new wrinkle to political campaigning, and I think that what we used to call "dirty tricks" are arguably taking ordinary political deception to a new level.

I don't know whether it violates any of the campaign laws, but I recently received an invitation from at least two Facebook friends which on its face appears to be part of a non-partisan get-out-the-vote drive. There's a red white, and blue ribbon image, and a picture of the friend, who asks,

[Name of Friend] asks: Will you join me in committing to vote?

Join the Commit to Vote Challenge and inspire your friends to vote

[Name of Friend] committed to vote by November 2nd.

Which of course I didn't, once I read the link and saw that the site was MyBarackObama.com. How many people are politically savvy enough to see that coming, I don't know.

But as an article in Forbes ("Are You Willing To Be This Committed To Voting?") explains, it is anything but a harmless get-out-the-vote drive:

Not to be outdone by the Republicans when it comes to technology and data-mining, Barack Obama has launched a new "Commit to Vote Challenge" Facebook application. You can access it through the Barack Obama website.

The Facebook application lets your friends know you plan to vote and encourages them through posting inspirational messages and videos to your wall. Not only does the application want to know all about you, it also wants to know who all of your friends are, along with their religious and political beliefs.

If you're willing to give up this much information about yourself, you must be seriously committed, indeed. Here are the permissions the application seeks when you choose to take the challenge:

I'm impressed by the innovative use of Facebook for data gathering, but given how freaked out everyone is about privacy violations by third party applications on the social networking site these days, it seems like a questionable political move at the moment.

I mean, go ahead and attack the other side and pile on the lies if you must, but there's just something about sending me political spyware through friends who think they're sending me a non-partisan civic participation reminder that kind of puts a new face on political dirty tricks. That the new face comes deceptively packaged as a super-friendly, helpful "Facebook friend" face makes it more insidious than even the most vicious or dishonest partisan attack ad.

The worst aspect of this is that some of these kids might not even think they're being partisan. My worry is that in their minds, directing a friend to a BarackObama get-out-the-vote site is actually a helpful thing to do. Because as the slogan goes, "Friends Don't Let Friends Vote Republican." And because we all agree on something as basic as that, then it's non-partisan, right, dude? And if the spyware detects conservative or libertarian tendencies and rats your friend out as a possible Republican supporter, then isn't that a good thing? It might help nudge him along the road to recovery! That's what non-partisan is all about. As Paul Krugman says, "Divided We Fail," which means it's those partisan Republicans who are being unpatriotic and ruining the country. This country is supposed to be non-partisan!

See what I mean? A good case can be made that the "Commit to Vote Challenge" Facebook application really is non-partisan!

And I'm the one who's being partisan! I must sound like a real ingrate and an asshole for not wanting a little non-partisan help from my friends.

I think I prefer the old system of mean, snarky attacks.

It might suck, but it just seems less Orwellian.

I'd snark that "Orwellian" is what the "O" in the "VOTE" logo stands for, but I'm afraid that would sound too partisan.

After all, who wants to be unpatriotic?