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Get Out the Vote...With Ringtones?

As if cell phone ringtones weren't annoying, ubiquitous and pervasive enough, now ringtones have gone all political on us.

Ringtones08.com says you should, "Let your cell phone do the talking. Exercise your freedom of speech and ring!" Come on, now. Not to sound like a curmudgeon or anything, but if folks need a ringtone to get fired up about an endless war or your First Amendment rights, we've got bigger problems to address.

That said, I couldn't help but notice that "Klaus Flouride" created some of the tones. Is that the same Klaus Flouride that played bass guitar for the 80s punk band the Dead Kennedys? WTF? The "GeorgeAllenMacaca" ring tone mixes a hip hop beat with a quote from Allen 's famous "macaca moment" speech. The "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" ring mashes a quote from George Bush about former FEMA director Michael Brown with the Arlo Guthrie song, “The Train They Call the City of New Orleans.”

But the ring tones are pretty janky. For better ring tones and a better laugh, check out Obama ringtones on the Daily Show.

My advice? Switch your phone to vibrate and move on. Also try checking out our latest issue, which just hit newsstands, where we ask a whole mess of politicos and digerati, are we entering a new era of digital democracy complete with Hillary ringtones, or just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?

We also spell out the latest on cell-phone activism and the political power of text messaging.

Posted by Gary Moskowitz on 06/29/07 at 10:54 AM | E-mail | Print | Digg | de.licio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Yahoo! MyWeb | StumbleUpon | Netscape | Google |