Cartoon lampoon: Bipartisan jab is Internet sensation

Servers crashed and a wave of laughter swept through cubicles across the country last week as a pair of online animators released a devastating satirical song about the presidential campaign.

See it at www.JibJab.com — if their server can handle it.

Set to the Woody Guthrie classic "This Land is Your Land," the song and cartoon — written and produced by brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis — lampoon the degraded political dialogue of this campaign season, which has been exacerbated by its sheer length, tens of millions of dollars in advertising money and the never-ending 24-hour news cycle.

"The issues are so big, and the discourse so juvenile, that if you don't laugh, you have to cry," said Gregg Spiridellis, 33, in a phone interview from his studio in Southern California.

The bit works so well because it skewers both President Bush and his challenger, Sen. John Kerry, taking on Bush's perceived lack of intelligence and Kerry's highfalutin mien.

The brothers started their careers as animators in Brooklyn in 1999 before moving to Santa Monica two years ago. They do work for Disney, Nickelodeon and advertising firms, and are currently working on an independent, animated feature film.

The pair released the short July 9 and told the 200,000 people they have on their e-mail list. Viewership has tripled nearly every day since, Gregg Spiridellis said, reaching more than one million viewers last Friday. That's not hard to believe, as www.jibjab.com has ricocheted around the Web, with friends and co-workers gathering around computers to watch and giggle before sending the link off to far-flung friends. (Folks getting frustrated trying to see the free version can download the cartoon for $2.99 and get immediate gratification.)

Like some 19th-century Mark Twain publisher who can't print fast enough, the Spiridellis brothers were busy trying to get more server space last week so more people can see the film. "We're crashing networks that aren't even ours," Gregg Spiridellis said.

You're a pinko commie
You're dumb as a doorknob
This land will surely vote for me.

J. Patrick Coolican: 206-464-3315 or jcoolican@seattletimes.com