It doesn't take long to figure out that gwbush.com isn't the Texas governor's official presidential campaign Web site.
There are a few clues:
The link to the crude Shockwave cartoon of Bush, with a pulsating headache, saying "I need some blow" and asking for his supplier, named "Carlos."
Hmmm . . .
The black-and-white photo of a younger Bush, stateside during Vietnam, with one hand on an aircraft ladder and his right foot on what is described as the "USAF Super Keg," a device Bush was supposedly testing.
Wait a second . . .
The Teletubby (yes, the purple one) with embarrassing pictures of Bush, from picking his nose to smiling like an idiot, flashing across its stomach/screen.
OK, hold on . . .
The MP3 file of Bush at a news conference, egged on by a reporter's softball question, when he utters the infamous line about gwbush.com: "There ought to be limits to freedom."
OK, we get it.
But who wouldn't quickly guess that gwbush.com is a political parody site, an Internet page to mock, not to inform? In this election year, the sites are proliferating, and not just about Bush. Vice President Al Gore, ersatz inventor of the Internet, has attracted his share of cybermockery as well.
The sites have touched off something of a debate over government regulation, to keep people from being duped by well-done fakery. The government has suggested making people who use a candidate's actual name in the URL subject to civil penalties, while groups such as Common Cause have suggested starting a special, candidates-only domain suffix.
But mostly, parody sites are a lot of fun.
Like most of these sites, gwbush.com is heavy on sarcasm, turning a person's record, words or image against him. Some parody sites look almost identical to their official counterparts. Others look nothing like the sites they claim to mock.
If the Internet is the common man's media, parody sites would qualify as the alternative press, focusing on things the mainstream media won't cover. But they also provide a window into what the politically disaffected think people ought to be talking about during the campaign.
With Bush, it's drug use and tales of his wild days as a party boy. With Hillary Rodham Clinton, it's her brushes with scandal and pursuit of power. With Gore, it's his rampant environmentalism and, of course, Buddhist-temple fund-raising.
The authors of the sites seem less interested in leading people astray - of duping the public into believing these are official campaign Web pages - than in making sure people have more than the syrupy sweet bios, family photos and r,sum, enhancements featured on the candidates' own pages. Like the class cynic who enjoys puncturing the reputation of the self-righteous student body president, these Web pages delight in being contrarian.
Although gwbush.com is the most famous - thanks in no small part to the campaign's complaint against the site's owner - george-w-bush.com isn't a bad effort, either. Motto:
"A reformer because it sounds good."
The standard-issue fake headlines aside, there are a couple of gems: "Governor Bush Says He's A Washington Outsider, Wants In." Or "Bush Takes Daring Neutral Stance On Confederate Flag Issue."
There's a lament that, because of the close primary race between Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain, Bush might actually have to come out and express some opinions on issues. That could threaten the Republican coronation, if you buy the assumption that if Bush were made to answer questions, his vacuousness would be manifested and no one would vote for him.
How many people could be taken in by these sites? In a quick check on the Google search engine for "George W. Bush," the first three links hit the official site. The fourth hit is gwbush.com, and it's not until No. 9 that george-w-bush.com makes an appearance.
But at No. 8, searchers are treated to the Skeleton Closet for Bush Jr. at realchange.org/bushjr.htm, essentially a list of hot-linked allegations about the man who would be president, from cocaine to dodging Vietnam.
The site nothillary.com is a dead giveaway on the screen - that URL can't be hers - but the site itself is a dead ringer for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's official site (for the record, it's www.hillary2000.org).
Again, there are embarrassing photos. Again, there's a collection of real news clips that paint Clinton in an unflattering light.
Did you know that Clinton was once president of a College Young Republicans Club? That she interned with the House Republican Conference? That she once eschewed public office? That she hired felons to work the Carter presidential campaign phone banks? It's all on this site, warts and . . . well, warts.
Although most parody sites just mock, nothillary.com seeks to get people actively involved. You can register for e-mail updates, request anti-Hillary merchandise and even make an online contribution - all major credit cards accepted!
Clinton's detractors are sure to love some of the political red meat on this site, including the e-catalog of Clinton's alleged lies, introduced by remarks such as: "She's been known to tie the truth into knots and twist it into the shape of a pretzel. As a skilled, Yale-trained lawyer, she's adept at seeing the truth as a highly malleable material that can be molded, shaped and manipulated like Play Dough into whatever form fits her purposes."
And then there's the Hillary Hair-O-Matic! This fun little game - under "Fun Stuff" - lets you try different hairstyles on the First Lady, to the accompaniment of a donkey's braying.
Just down the cyberstreet at hillary2000.com - motto: "The official anti-Hillary campaign Web site" - is a busy little page bristling with anti-Hillary stuff, where the objective is good, old-fashioned, limited government, and having fun, too,"mostly at Hillary's expense."
This site mostly exists to sell stuff, and if you contribute, you can win buttons from one of Richard Nixon's national campaigns, or maybe a Hillary Clinton voodoo doll.
And while it's not exactly parody, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, at nrsc.org, has a Hillary site all its own called StopHillaryNow.com (www.nrsc.org/contents/stophillarynow). The site, loaded with anti-Hillary information, features the First Lady's head popping up over the New York City skyline, conspiratorially raising her eyebrows, only to disappear and pop up in a different place - a political Godzilla from afar to menace the good people of Gotham.
While Clinton is easily the most polarizing figure of the 2000 elections, Vice President Al Gore runs a close second.
You could reach the site www.allgore.com with a simple keyboard mistake, and it's easy to miss the extra "l" in the big title on the page that greets you with a picture of the vice president.
But the stilted dialogue reveals this is not Al Gore's official site. Would the veep really say something such as this: "I want to create an America where we recognize how tired today's working parents are - and take action to let them sleep in so they won't be so tired the next day at work."? Or this: "I want our nation to lead the world to a shiny glorious future, but one with a smaller hole in the ozone layer."?
Well, yeah, maybe. But that's what makes it parody.
Check out "achievements" - it's under "Me Stuff" - and you'll see Gore's face adorning Mount Rushmore for such profiles-in-courage moments as refusing to block Congress' deficit-cutting efforts, not standing in the way of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and leading the administration's efforts on community empowerment, defined as "using Government hand-outs and incentives to pay off crack dealers to move to a neighborhood in someone else's community."
Under "Environaut," we learn that Gore believes "choosing between the economy and the environment is easy: screw the economy!" And under "Goretopia," we find out he wants to eliminate cars, but only from cities with 50,000 or more people. His record on health care? "As a Congressman, Al Gore was a leader in the fight to expand Government's role in health care."
But the best part of www.allgore.com is "Fun and Games," where you can play interactive games such as "Kosovo," where you have to shoot down enemy planes, but avoid flying ducks. And if you shoot those flowers in the corner, you lose, buddy!
While you're there, play the Hollywood Liberal Edition of Healthcare 2000. You get to give liberals such as Whoopi Goldberg, Barbra Streisand, Ted Danson and Alec Baldwin a dose of their own medicine, but the game will let you try only fatal courses of treatment.
Hit the hot links to visit some other anti-Gore sites, such as NoGore.com - boring; it's full of serious anti-Al stuff, nogore.org - better; it pictures Gore with the ghoulish mask from the "Scream" trilogy with the tagline: "Someone has taken their love of political sequels one step too far," or albore.com - commercial; the site is selling books by Pat Buchanan, Steve Forbes, John McCain and Jesse Ventura, And as if that's not enough, the site itself is for sale, along with domain names such as bore2000.com and albore-2000.com.
Of course, the best Gore parody site is www.algore2000.com, with headlines about how working families would benefit under Gore's middle-class tax-cut plan - yawn - Gore discussing his health care plan - more yawn - and his vision for "prosperity and progress" - must . . .stay . . . awake . . . . These guys even have photos of the Gore family hanging out on the porch, and . . . .Wait a second. That's no parody. It's Gore's actual site.
