JibJab Revisited
The latest:

Every time he opens his crammed e-mail box, Ryan Canavan groans -- but sometimes he clicks on a message from a friend that evokes a belly laugh and a couple of minutes of nonstop chuckles.

''This is great,'' guffaws Canavan, 37, after double-clicking on the hugely popular JibJab.com to watch an animated political cartoon called This Land. What's best, he adds, is that ``it's nonpartisan -- poking fun at both presidential candidates.''

JibJab ranks No. 9 on the Lycos 50 list of most popular searched items, but it's just one example of the countless political animations, cartoons, jokes and sight gags sent by e-mail in unprecedented numbers, affecting the lifestyles and work habits of practically everyone who uses a computer.

Personally, my e-mail is filled more with worms, but that's another story.

And, of course, Accounting Today weighs in:

But just as channel surfing — courtesy of a cable remote — made us inherently lazier, I’m sure we would be shocked at just how large a portion of a traditional work day is spent cruising online at non-work-related URLs.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I’m hardly a virgin at this, nor am I telling you anything you don’t already know. It’s just that as someone who’s often 10 years behind the curve on every trend, I’m stunned at how sophisticated surfing has become, not to mention prevalent.

As an example, some 20 of us gathered around a co-worker’s cubicle last week watching the hilarious Bush-Kerry parody of “This Land is Your Land” on jibjab.com. And many have since replayed it several times.

By the way, if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it.

And The Ledger has a quote from Arlo Guthrie on the matter (forgive me if you've already seen this; I hadn't):

Guthrie's son, Arlo, was asked about the controversy recently during an interview on National Public Radio. What would his father say?

Guthrie: "Well, I really can't speak for him. I can just tell you that when I saw it a few weeks ago I thought it was one of the funniest commentaries if not one of the most directly inspired . . . I called my sister, I called my friends, I sent everybody a link to the site so that they could go see it. And we've all been laughing about it since then. I think my dad would have absolutely loved the humor in it."

He went on to say that he didn't "think that this JibJab version of `This Land Is Your Land' is going to replace the original song and it doesn't really compromise it.

"I think it makes fun of both of these guys to some extent. I just think it is an incredibly wonderful bit of hilarity in the midst of an overserious conversation."

Well, now JibJab will have to parody "Alice's Restaurant." Let me help them a little bit (thanks to Arlo for posting the original chorus):

You can get anything you want at Political Promise Land
You can get anything you want at Political Promise Land
Just don't look around the back
For the lobbyists from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Political Promise Land