[Opinion] “Big Brother” Hillary

Some say that the Hillary Clinton’s autobiography, titled “Breathing history,” which was also published in Korea, was mistranslated. The Korean title of this book should have been “Living History” both grammatically and based on its content. Such a contention might not be baseless, considering that the book title written by Dick Morris, a former political adviser to the Clintons who criticizes Hillary, is “Rewriting History.”

Hillary, who is a strong Democratic candidate for the 2008 U.S. presidential election, has as many anti-fans as ardent supporters. Opinion poll results say that even though there are 17,000 Internet sites supporting Hillary, 47 percent of Americans said that they will not vote for Hillary in the election. Opinion poll results say that the reasons for such antipathy were quoted as, "She is an opportunist who does not know security," "I don’t want to see a woman run amok," and "She is too strong a woman to turn a blind eye to her partner’s unfaithfulness."

There are reports that Hillary, who did not lose her composure after countless attacks by opponents, was very embarrassed at a UCC clip that described her as a dictatorial “big brother” from George Orwell’s novel “1984.” A 74-second clip that was produced by a supporter of Senator Barack Obama, a competitor within the party, received more than 2 million hits and generated thousands of comments. That is the largest number of hits since YouTube’s political section opened.

The reason why UCC’s negative effect is fearsome is not because it is a new online media outlet and its users are young. The reason is that UCC hinders the judgment of the younger generation that is used to images and sensations by breaking down a barrier between reality and images. A good example is that the U.S. attack on Iraq that was aired live worldwide like a computer game four years ago, and Iraq’s current miserable reality. Nobody knows when such case might occur in Korea. The real “big brother” of the 2007 presidential election may be UCC.

Editorial Writer Chung Seong-hee, shchung@donga.com