The LA Times has a great piece on Robert Greenwald’s targeting John McCain via viral YouTube ads.

In a dim Culver City editing room, two video snippets of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain fill the monitors. In the first, he says same-sex marriage should be allowed. In the second, he says it should be illegal.

The clips are part of the payoff of a weeks-long hunt by filmmaker Robert Greenwald and his production team for damaging Internet video of the Arizona senator.

Greenwald, the producerdirector of scathing documentaries about Fox News and Wal-Mart, hopes to shatter McCain’s image as a straight-talking maverick. But instead of creating a full-length film, he is assembling clips of McCain for a series of two-minute Web videos. The idea is to turn McCain’s own words against him, spreading the videos through e-mail, blogs and websites.

“The effectiveness is hearing and seeing him say stuff,” Greenwald said in the editing bay. The videos “go right to the character issue — who he is.”

Greenwald did some really moving and amazing work in Iraq For Sale. I’ve been watching and waiting to see what he’d go after next.

He’s set up a website with lots of flip-floppy videos and a nice blog that tracks McCain’s various shenanigans. (I tried to include a video but I’m evidently not up to AB 411 Advanced Blogging yet)

Will it actually clue the media in to the fact that McCain is no saint? Time will tell. But it sure is nice to see somebody trying.