Opinion: JibJab, just in time

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Tired of the New Yorker cover controversy? Just in time, JibJab has a new video. The Santa Monica-based entertainment company hit the viral video jackpot in 2004 with its video of John Kerry and George W. Bush singing ‘This Land is Your Land.’ They’ve been churning out new material between presidential election years, and ‘Time for Some Campaignin’’ is the first for the 2008 season.

Whether because it avoids imagery that could be considered racist or religiously bigoted, because its attacks are bipartisan, or because it’s sing-songy, the video seems like a salve for anyone rubbed the wrong way by the New Yorker. Not to mention that the Clintons, a favorite target of media left and right, and longtime punchlines President Bush and Dick Cheney have bit parts.

While John McCain suffers his usual lumps -- that he’s too old and sick and reliant on his Vietnam vet image -- the video also manages to do what various pundits and comics had begun to worry was impossible: mock Barack Obama. The candidate’s caricature, surrounded by lovestruck little animals, sings his way through a lush forest like Aurora from ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ repeating the word change over and over. It doesn’t have the bite of the New Yorker cover, or the fine-tuned if controversial Obama imitation of Saturday Night Live’s Fred Armisen, but it’s something.

*Photos courtesy JibJab.com and NBC Universal Inc.