Romney Accidentally Advertises On Gay.com

The Skinny: For Campaigns, Web Is Still A "Wild West" Filled With Potential Pitfalls

(CBS)  The Skinny is Keach Hagey's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.

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It's a tough call which accidental placement of Mitt Romney's online campaign ads, as reported by the New York Times, is funnier: The irony of the same-sex marriage-opposing former governor unintentionally urging readers of Gay.com to "Join Team Mitt!" is pretty strong.

But in the end we're going to have to go with the Mormon family man, desperate for Americans not to perceive his religion as some kind of weird cult, advertising on FanFiction.net. In case you're not familiar, that's where users can write their own plots about their favorite fictional characters or read the work of others "including pornographic scenes between Harry Potter and Hermione Granger."

The Times chalks all this up to campaigns having very little idea what they're doing when they advertise online. It takes them until the ninth paragraph, but they do, inevitably, compare the Web to the "Wild West."

Romney isn't the only one to have trouble with online context recently. Earlier this year, Barack Obama removed an ad from an Amazon.com screen dedicated to the book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," which has upset Jewish groups who view it as anti-Semitic. He found out it was there only after he was contacted by The New York Sun.

A former aide to John McCain said he was surprised to see his candidate's ads show up on the Huffington Post. And an ad for Rudy Giuliani showed up on the DailyKos last week.

Politicians have decades of experience advertising on television, where they have reams of research to help guide them to the audiences they want. But things like the online "ad networks" that got Romney into trouble are new. But the Times suggests that the political sector seems to be learning the online media game much slower than their corporate peers.

According to Jon Gibs, a vice president at Nielsen Online, "Corporate media consultants don't make mistakes like this."

Yahoo Gets Congressional Scolding For Kowtowing To Chinese Government

Yahoo got a fierce public shaming before Congress yesterday for handing the Chinese government information that led to the imprisonment of a journalist, reports the Los Angeles Times.

At a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Yahoo's conduct in China, Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-Burlingame) "pilloried" Yahoo Inc. Chief Executive Jerry Yang for providing the Chinese government with journalist Shi Tao's identity from his e-mail address in 2004.

"While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies," Lantos scolded. He asked Yang to apologize to Shi's mother, which he did, bowing three times.

Chinese authorities had demanded to know the owner of the Yahoo e-mail address from which a government memo had been forwarded to an international human rights group. The memo had forbidden news coverage of the anniversary of the Tianenmen Square massacre. After Yahoo disclosed the identity, Shi was sentenced to 10 years in prison for divulging what China considered a state secret.

In 2006, Yahoo officials testified before Congress that the company "had no information about the nature of the investigation" the Chinese authorities were conducting, but a Chinese police document made public last fall showed the Chinese government had told Yahoo the information it wanted was connected to "illegally providing secrets."

The controversy over Yahoo's testimony and its role in Chinese police investigations led the committee last month to approve the Global Online Freedom Act, which calls for fines of as much as $2 million for disclosing information that identifies a particular Internet user to officials from an "Internet Restricting Country" except for legitimate law purposes.

The bill faces tough opposition from large Internet companies, including Yahoo. Despite yesterday's bows and apologies, Yahoo does not support the legislation.

M.I.T. Has Second Thoughts About Frank Gehry's "Drunken Robots"

If you order up a building that looks like a crumpled can, chances are it's going to act like, well, a crumpled can.

So it's not exactly shocking to read the New York Times report that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing uber-ubiquitous architect Frank Gehry over his designs for the university's Stata Center, considering that the architect himself said the building "looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate."

The lawsuit claims the $300-million building has "design and construction failures" that resulted in pervasive leaks, cracks and drainage problems that have required costly repairs.

But it is always fun to hear what Frank has to say for himself. In an interview, Gehry, whose firm was paid $15 million for the project, said construction problems were inevitable in the design of complex buildings.

"These things are complicated," he said. "And they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small."

Especially, apparently, when there are drunken robots involved.

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[denn034]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!

[likeabllunch]

'' .. war rapes babys & what u did was assaulting an officet, u get a medal of honor & u are henceforth an officet: u get to to visit 1 sick bed at up to 33 villages each night spread across 3 or 6 countys so to cut & paste your blooms & other inventorys for up to 33 dollars each night, hold hands & weave bouquets, recycle garbage & garden to educational props accents dances jingles arts crafts knicks knacks, shopgift grass dirt for cures cancer other margaritas margaritas other cures cancer, shift shapes, toggle virtual & realtime, travel eternitys at speed of thought, hikenswim nerfbus bumpcar camp & nap, dance get well feed world get sick tax world hike naked dance dressed porn songs rallyd round billions sick beds that swimm & drift tens millions spore bloom weed dragon trail fickle first aid lunch farm cottage studio trail crossing yseedsberry trail groups dotted wit homed sheltets, speckled with drip compost fertilizet & drip water irrigatet, dcorated with folk playing zero resistance free form tai chi aikido yogaerobic inkblot sport & puzzle for life & lunch the musical epic quest to cure the common death & the wondet supet flora poet ballot ballet bowl & lusty forge your own epic karaoke feed worlds with free food medicine for each & all forever & evermore & infinite wishes come true .. if any ask which came first, eternity or earth? earth & eternity came together, so any answer is logical .. ''

[roach9703]

Maybe Rommey should hire Senator Wide-Stance!

[flipantflaw]

'' ... giving product away to like 330+ folk for tips and donations from 33 or 165 folk ... ''

'' ... at avg 90,000 countys of 90,000 folk, 300 villages of 300 folk, and 33 villages / sickbeds visited each night, and 7 or so villages visited each county, that''s like 4 or 5 countys visited each day, and each county in the world visited in around 50 years ... ''

'' ... most authoritys most time don''t remind folk that most folk most time don''t dance get well feed world get sick tax world hike naked dance dressed porn songs rallied round the billions sick beds drifting swimming the tens millions spore bloom weed dragon trail fickle first aid lunch farm cottage studio trail crossing yseedsberry trail groups ... ''

'' ... folk are able so have funds, sick beds are unable so don''t have funds, so folk live and work at the sick beds where they give all their funds to those what are sick, but only so they''ll always have someone laying around what knows all about helping the critters on their sick beds ... ''

[topprophet]

All of these free trade deals and world governmental organizations that all of the presidential candidates support (except Ron Paul), such as the ICC, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, and CAFTA, are all major threat to our nation''s sovereignty. They transfer power from our government to unelected foreign elites. The ICC wants to try our soldiers as war criminals. Both the WTO and CAFTA could force Americans to get a doctor''s prescription to take herbs and vitamins. The WTO has forced Congress to change our laws to meet their needs, and not our own. If anything, the WTO makes trade relations worse by giving foreign competitors a new way to attack U.S. jobs. The NAFTA superhighway, which is currently being built, is just one part of a plan to erase our borders and create the North American Union, a single nation State like the EU, out of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, with a new unelected bureaucracy and money system. And forget about controlling immigration under the NAU scheme. There won''t be any borders anymore, or a free America. Our limited, constitutional government, will be gone forever. Let''s not forget the UN either. It wants to impose a direct Carbon Tax on us. Ron Paul successfully fought this move in Congress last year, but if we are going to stop ongoing attempts of this world government body to rule over us, we need someone who knows how to say "No." We must withdraw from any organizations or trade deals that infringes upon our nation''s sovereignty. Vote AMERICA FIRST. Vote for Ron Paul.

[starleo146]

Did his ad have him tap dancing.

[tcoleman12]

I am totally prepared to not care about where he advertises. I like the man''s politics & he will represent me much better than any one of the Libocrats out there.

[chucktruck2]

Mitt is for civil rights .Mitt has always been for marriage between a man and a woman. Who said the ad was not meant to be for all Americans? Anger is fear.Ignorant bigots pretending to be *** can not stop the truth. Is it OK to be an uncaring liar ,to push a commy shot the *** first agenda ? Ha Ha a joke reveals who you are .And you are ....SCARY.............Ann Romney will make the best first lady.

[mellie1957]

They want the votes. They don''t care if who is gay & who isn''t. Not an accident.

[cassandragop]

So much for Micro-Manager-Mitt.
Politicians who are not web-savvy should go home and catch up on their naps.

[antoniof123]

You know for a business man who according to the Republicans is supposed to be so capable.

DID HE MISS THE PART ABOUT RESEARCH. Oh wait that is what CEO''s who get there money from their Dads do they just spend other peoples money.

Maybe he is just like wide stance.

[stevex47]

Accident? Like cheney shooting his "buddy"? Sure.

[fairandbal]

Let''s all give a big WELCOME to another new member of the ''wide stance'' GOP party!
WELCOME MITT!!!

[tbweb]

No Accident! It Was Not An Accident!

Posted by beecuster at 02:06 PM : Nov 07, 2007,,,

Nope! Neither was Obama Osama bin Laden!

[blindersoff]

This is so funny, most of the posters are thinking the same as me. Doesn''t sound like an accident. And the "wide stance" comparison is TOO FUNNY! In 36 years i have not touched another''s foot in the restroom and i am not short.

[jsilver2th]

Thanks for the tip... Just to think I almost answered that one... just another sting... where is Larry Craig when Mitt needs him? Oh yeah under the train for his mistake! LMAO

[marcodele]

When you''ve got more money to spend than places to spend it, these things happen. It''s a curse most republican presidential candidates have to deal with.
Poor Mitt.

[omega39-2009]

Yahoo Gets Congressional Scolding For Kowtowing To Chinese Government

From the same liars and hypocrites that want to give immunity to telecoms for selling out their customers to illegal wiretapping.

[honestabe8]

yeah...accidentally....just like larry craig''s "wide stance"

[agarwal1]

I knew that some day Brittaney will die with over dose but never thought this soon.

May she rest in peace.