The video blasted across the World Wide Web, drawing political blood from Senator John McCain within a matter of days.

Produced here in a cluttered former motel behind the Sony Pictures lot, it juxtaposed harsh statements about Islam made by the Reverend Rod Parsley with statements from McCain praising Parsley, a conservative evangelical leader. The montage won notice on network newscasts that spring and ultimately helped lead McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, to reject Parsley’s earlier endorsement.

In previous elections, an attack like that would have come from party operatives, campaign researchers or the professional political hit men who orbit around them.

But in the 2008 race, the first in which campaigns are feeling the full force of the changes wrought by the Web, the most attention-grabbing attacks are increasingly coming from society outside the political world. In some cases they are amateurs operating with nothing but passion, a computer and a YouTube detail, in other cases

sophisticated media types with more elaborate resources but no campaign experience.

So it was with the Parsley video, which was the work of a 64-year-old film director, Robert Greenwald, and his small band of 20-something assistants. Once best known for films like “Xanadu” and the television movie “The Burning Bed,” Greenwald shows how technology has dispersed the ability to shape campaign narratives, potentially upending the way American presidential campaigns are fought.

Greenwald’s McCain videos, most of which portray the senator as contradicting himself in different settings, have been viewed more than five million times — more than McCain’s own campaign videos have been downloaded on YouTube.

“If you had told me we would have hit one million, I would have told you you were crazy,” said Greenwald, who said he had no ties to the Democratic Party or Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.

Four years ago, the World Wide Web was a…

Orginal post by Mike

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