My Words are Flat and Harsh

It's guerrilla politics at its cleverest. The mysterious Internet video that compares Sen. Hillary Clinton to Big Brother is the boffo hit of the YouTube Web site.

The 74-second clip, a copy of a 1984 Apple ad for its Macintosh computer, has recorded more than 1 million views, with an enormous surge in the past two days.

View the controversial Hillary 1984 video .

While the video's final image reads "BarackObama.com," the campaign of the Illinois senator has denied being behind it.

Its creator remained anonymous.

But for political strategists, ad experts, even journalists, the ad presents a series of other fundamental unknowns.

_How will Web content outside the control of campaigns affect voters?

_How should campaigns react to anonymous but highly viewed attacks?

_When is Web content, no matter how provocative, newsworthy?

As the Internet looks more and more like an electronic community, politicians are increasingly devoting resources to their Web sites, planting themselves in electronic gathering places such as Facebook.com and MySpace.com and posting their videos on YouTube.