Cheezburger Network to Whitman campaign: FAIL!

Graphics in a political attack ad for California gubernatorial
candidate and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman that imitated popular humor
blog FailBlog aren't going over too well with Cheezburger Network, the amalgam of blogs that owns FailBlog.

"We are talking to our attorneys on this," Cheezburger Network founder and CEO Ben Huh told CNET via e-mail. "We haven't decided on a course of action, if any. The law is a complex beast."

Huh's comment followed a post he wrote Friday on FailBlog,
in which he addressed the fact that a recent video campaign ad on
Republican candidate Whitman's behalf that attacked Democratic opponent
Jerry Brown appeared to show a FailBlog screenshot mocking Brown.
"FailBlog or the Cheezburger Network has never been involved in any
endorsement of any candidate or political party and do not plan to do
so," Huh wrote Friday. "This is a place for humor, a place to laugh,
and to have light-hearted fun poking at each other and what we see in
the world."

Of course, it's great press for FailBlog, a cult phenomenon which
soared to fame for its seemingly endless trove of photographs and
videos that depict awkward packaging labels, skateboarders crashing
into trees, and crime-scene photos of cops nabbing drunks. To be
imitated in a political attack ad in a high-profile race is, really, a
sign that they've made it.

What concerned Huh was the perception that the site is politically
biased, something that he said generated some responses from misled
readers.

"The issue is that they faked the contents of the site and created
an impression that we criticized their opponent," Huh clarified to
CNET. "While the header of the site doesn't appear, the screenshot was identifiable enough that our users thought we had an affiliation withtheir campaign."

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