Republican presidential candidate and Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s latest Web ad, in which he discusses how gays can now serve openly in the military “but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas” has now received more dislikes than Rebecca Black’s infamous “Friday” music video.
As of Friday afternoon, Perry’s “Strong” ad had received over 450,000 dislikes, while “Friday” had a measly 258,000. The much-parodied ad is also said to have caused a split within the ranks at Perry headquarters, with the campaign’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, going so far as to call it “nuts.”
“Tony was against it from the get-go,” GOP operative Nelson Warfield, who created the ad, told The Huffington Post. “It was the source of some extended conversation in the campaign. To be very clear: That spot was mine from writing the poll question to test[ing] it to drafting the script to overseeing production.”
The ad’s less-than-welcoming reception on the Internet is just another stumble for a campaign that was troubled from the start. Perry, briefly the front-runner for the GOP nomination, has seen his standing in the polls sink to single digits after a series of flubs and unforced errors.
And if that wasn’t enough to ruin his week, Perry committed two more of his trademark gaffes on Friday during a meeting with the Des Moines Register editorial board when he referenced the “eight unelected” judges of the Supreme Court. There are, in fact, nine judges on the Supreme Court. In the same interview, he also referred to Justice Sonya Sotomayor as “Montemayor.”
While the Perry ad’s nearly half-million dislikes on YouTube is impressive, it still pales in comparison to Justin Bieber’s “Baby.” With more than two million dislikes, “Baby” remains the most disliked YouTube video of all time.