Parody in the home pages scrambles 'the real thing.'

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 25, 1996 | by Lisa Leiter

Negative campaigning has seized the 1996 presidential race just as it has in election years past: radio and TV attack ads; finger-pointing press releases; downright nasty debates. Mud, figuratively speaking, is everywhere.

Everywhere except the Internet. Bob Dole hasn't once accused Steve Forbes of flaming him (a cyberattack) via E-mail. Lamar Alexander hasn't launched an on-line campaign against Pat Buchanan. In terms of netiquette, this is one clean campaign, save a few jabs on the official candidate home-page sites of the World Wide Web.

That's no surprise, say computer junkies. Cybercampaigning is a new medium -- one that many of the 1996 contenders never used before this year. They're getting up to speed, though. Alexander announced his candidacy on-line and Buchanan's low-budget campaign relies heavily upon volunteers known as the "Internet Brigade" to post information, enter the cyberpolls and spread news.

"Bob Dole's been surfing the Internet for many years," says a sarcastic Mark Pace, a 24-year-old San Francisco systems engineer. "I have a feeling that as the candidates get more involved with the mode of communication, then there will be more mudslinging on it." But, until the other big-time politicians upgrade their personal computers and learn the lingo, they will just have to rely upon conventional mudslinging methods and leave the Internet fun to Pace and others. Pace, a confessed "fed-up political junkie," and his high-school buddy, 26-year-old computer-test developer Brooks Talley, decided to poke some fun at the 1996 presidential hopefuls. Last June, they found former candidate Phil Gramm's Web site. It was so tacky, so uninformative, they recall, that they thought they were looking at a parody.

When they realized it was the real thing, they had an idea. They secured site names such as dole96 and buchanan96, just like the real Gramm page name. They then created Web sites with witty, satirical tidbits about the candidates, chock-full of graphics almost identical to those on the official pages. Their Dole page includes the Dole fruit-company logo and boasts that he is "a ripe man for the job" and founder of the Dole fruit company. Buchanan's site provides "links to fascist organizations," which takes you to the Aryan Nation home page. Forbes' site says his "very name conjures up images of power, wealth and glossy magazines."

They've caught some harsh E-mail from various candidate supporters, complaining that they're stealing art or disrupting democracy with their antics. But Linda Muller, a volunteer who maintains the Buchanan camp's official Web site, says, "The first time I saw it, I thought, `This guy's a creep.' But then I thought, `This guy is creative and his stuff is funny.' I must be the only one (with the campaign) who's not upset." Muller gets about 50 messages a day from supporters infuriated at the spoof sites.

Pace and Talley both are libertarians who say that about 20 percent of the inquiries they receive as E-mail are sincere campaign questions or comments, which they describe as "scary." Asked if Muller is concerned about voters mistaking the satire site for the real thing, she responds: "I can't believe anyone would be that lame. Maybe they ought to vote for someone else."

America Online thought they were the real thing one day in October and directed users to Pace and Talley's sites for information on the congressional balanced-budget debate. About 2,000 messages poured into their Web pages. Talley responded to the civic-minded cybersurfers with this generic line: "The only way the federal budget process can work is if both sides support each other and avoid partisan bickering over what projects to cut, by mutually agreeing not to cut anything substantive." The guys were nice enough, though, to explain they were not accepting donations for the Dole campaign.

These satirical efforts have rankled even the White House. A Clinton campaign official politely called Talley and asked him to return the site name clinton96. "I basically said no," Talley recalls. No further efforts were made.

Pace and Talley are branching out from on-line political humor and have created their own nonprofit group, Satire Online. They have a spoof on Microsoft (http://www.microsnot.org), but Talley says that politicians are the most fun to lampoon: "You look at these people and you think, `They have the least right to take themselves seriously."

Here are some political-satire sites to surf:

http://www.buchanan96.org

http://www.clinton96.org

http://www.dole96.org

http://www.forbes96.org

http://www.limbaugh96.org

http://www.powell96.org

http://www.quayle96.org

For those not easily offended, this can be fun.