YouTube deletes video of McCain singing 'Bomb Iran'

YouTube confirmed Friday that it had erroneously deleted and would restore a video of presidential candidate John McCain singing an impromptu ditty about starting a war with Iran.

The Arizona senator joked about attacking the sovereign nation during a campaign stop in South Carolina this week, singing, to the tune of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann": "That old, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran. Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway."

According to a video recorded by what appears to be a camera phone held by someone at the back of the room, the audience laughed at McCain's rendition of the classic song (the video was restored in the last several hours and can be seen here).

But the clip was deleted by YouTube, which is owned by Google. A spokesman for YouTube, who asked that his name not appear in this article, said, "We appreciate the prompt feedback from our community regarding the McCain video. It was flagged by our users, we reviewed it and it was mistakenly removed. We have examined the situation and have since reinstated the video."

The spokesman refused to answer any other questions, such as when, exactly, the video was deleted or what procedures are in place to ensure that political candidates don't use YouTube's complaint procedure to squelch critics. The popular video-sharing site permits users to flag videos as "inappropriate."

The New Yorker magazine reported in February that, despite the Bush administration's public claims not to have any plans to bomb Iran, the Pentagon has secret plans to carry out a bombing attack if authorized by President Bush. McCain said bombing Iran, which is accused of aiding the Iraq insurgents, may be necessary to protect Israel.

This is not the first time a controversy has erupted over political videos removed by YouTube. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has documented other videos that it says should not have been deleted.

The EFF has filed suit against Viacom on behalf of MoveOn.org and Brave New Films, saying a satire of the The Colbert Report was removed from YouTube following a "baseless" copyright complaint.

"It is time to draw a line in the sand and make clear that taking down political speech first and asking questions later is absolutely unacceptable behavior," Adam Green, civic communications director at MoveOn.org, said in response to the McCain video deletion.

Recently, another anti-Bush video surfaced on YouTube. This one pokes fun at World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz--who is currently embroiled in a controversy over a hiring that violates the organization's policy--in the style of NBC's popular TV show The Office. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards is mocked in a video showing him spending more than two minutes fussing with his hair and camera makeup.

[open-mind]

Liberal Media Is Smiling

Because they're going to have a field day with this.

Case in point ... this "technology" article.

I didn't know we had the technology to remove a video from
YouTube. That's amazing!

[perfectblue97]

Quick off the draw

They seemed to act against this clip faster than they act against IPR violations.

[Lucky Lou]

Not free speech protected

This comment is mis-informed: "It is time to draw a line in the
sand and make clear that taking down political speech first and
asking questions later is absolutely unacceptable behavior."

YouTube has no obligation, legal or otherwise, to anyone to
keep posted videos online. They can take down whatever they
want for whatever reason they like. Free speech protection
applies to government interaction with the public, in that you
cannot be legally prosecuted for what you say nor prevented
from saying what you like. None of this applies to YouTube!

[Mark Greene]

What if the Liberal Media are actually at the Center?

(though woefully incompetent)

That would mean the people who label critics as traitors are
atcually a bit out of touch, wouldn't it?

[Zaphod_Beeblebrox]

Liberal media...

If you keep moving left you can eventually accuse centrists of being right wing extremists. The press and the Democrats have been doing this for years.