If the the campaigns of California gubernatorial hopefuls Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have imparted any lasting lessons to we, the American people, this year, it’s how to avoid the many pitfalls of modern technology. First, Brown showed us how easily you could neglect to hang up a “telephone” after leaving a voice mail, allowing your ensuing conversation about how whorish your opponent is to be recorded. Now Meg Whitman’s press secretary, Sarah Pompeii, has demonstrated the care that we all must take when copying links from bit.ly, the link-shortening program frequently used on Twitter. In a tweet this week, Pompeii had wanted to share a press release trumpeting the San Diego County Sheriff’s Association endorsement of Whitman. But she mistakenly left off the last letter of the bit.ly link. And, as so often happens, the corrupted link led to a YouTube video of cross-dressing Korean bassist Hyunmo Kim, a.k.a. H.J. Freaks. It’s about as far as you can get from a police-union endorsement, but for the Internet, it could not possibly have worked out any better.
