Revealed: “1984” anti-Hillary ad creator is …

… none other than a (now former) staffer for a consulting firm used by Senator Barack Obama. Some of Arianna Huffington’s readers solved the big “mystery”:

Last night, we sent out a challenge to the HuffPost team asking them to hit the phones and contact all their sources. As a result, we have learned the video was the work of Philip de Vellis, who was the Internet communications director for Sherrod Brown’s 2006 Senate campaign, and who now works at Blue State Digital, a company created by members of Howard Dean’s Internet Team.

The video was posted on YouTube on March 5th under the username ParkRidge47 (Hillary Clinton was born in Park Ridge, Illinois in 1947).

In an email to techpresident.com, ParkRidge47 explained his reason for making the video:

The idea was simple and so was the execution. Make a bold statement about the Democratic primary race by culture jacking a famous commercial and replacing as few images as possible. For some people it doesn’t register, but for people familiar with the ad and the race it has obviously struck a chord.

A friend suggested the idea after reading a New York Times article about the Clinton’s campaign bullying of donors and political operatives after the Geffen dustup.

When I called Phil de Vellis, I invited him to blog on HuffPost about this, about the creation of the video, and about the explosive reaction to his work.

And that he did. Supposedly, this was done on his off time, so the company he worked for doesn’t have to worry about ‘claming responsibility’ for the ad, nor does Obama. But the questions linger …

I gotta take my hat off to the HuffPo readers who dug for and found this info. It’s refreshing to see them channel all that hatred into something positive for once.

And finally, an encore performance of the ad that started it all (which Hillary supposedly “laughed off” when asked about):

Related via Captain Ed: Obama: Against The Funding Before He Was For It

Update: Dan Riehl wonders: was de Vellis a sock puppet for past campaigns?