Amidst all the brouhaha that was caused by John McCain’s latest, Paris-Hilton-laden attack on Barack Obama, most people overlooked a smaller, equally questionable online campaign launched by the Republican National Committee over the summer. That’s right, in an effort to appear Internet savvy - or savvy at all - the people behind GOP.com launched BarackBook, a site intended to both parody Facebook and skewer Obama all at the same time. In capable hands, the effort might have actually succeeded in producing some sort of cyber-satire (perhaps a humorous commentary on the pseudo-politics that float around Facebook), but alas, when it comes to razor-sharp comedians and pointed observation, the Republican National Committee doesn’t always spring to mind. That’s why it’s no surprise that BarackBook falls flat, stuck in that gray area between “lame” and “sad.”

First of all, the entire premise of developing a Facebook-esque page to mock Obama has implicit problems. Facebook is currently the hottest social networking site on the Internet, and according to Alexa.com, it’s been ranked as the fifth largest site in the world since June. Everyone loves it, and everyone’s on it. By poking fun of Obama and his famously huge presence on Facebook, the Republicans are only reinforcing the notion that their opponent is quintessentially linked to one of the most buzzworthy components of pop culture right now. Even worse for the RNC, BarackBook also reminds us that in the most popular online community in the world, Obama reigns supreme with 1.2 million fans of his page (compared to a paltry 191,485 for McCain). Again, not a brilliant strategy for taking the Dems down a peg or two.

In terms of the actual BarackBook site, it’s attempts to link Obama with unsavory individuals falls flat. The concept is actually very sly - adding people like Tony Rezko and William Ayers to Obama’s “profile.” The problem, however, is that there’s just so much text on the site, it’s hard to even look at it. I never really thought anyone could have a site more text heavy than Hillary Clinton’s, but it seems as though BarackBook has taken her to town. From the opening page, all we see is just… text. Follow a link to one of Obama’s “friends,” and you’ll be saddled with even more text, which is made even more difficult to read thanks to liberal use of boldface style. What’s the point of writing all these damning statements about Obama if you can’t even read them? The real Facebook is softer, easier on the eyes. It employs colors and photos and white space and little icons. One might even say it has - dare I say it - a design aesthetic.

And perhaps that’s where BarackBook fails most of all. It’s simply too feeble an attempt to recreate Facebook. Heck, it hardly even looks like the site. Facebook has such a simple layout that it’s difficult to understand why the BarackBook designers didn’t just copy it verbatim.It feels as if the people behind this parody haven’t even been to Facebook in the first place, which once again doesn’t do much for that whole “McCain is old and disconnected” image. Heck, if the makers of BarackBook knew anything at all, they’d know that Obama certainly has more than 11 friends. 1,288,184 (as of this typing) to be specific. And growing all the time.

–Ben Mandelker

Photo by Mark J. Sebastian