GOP Tech Tragedy Sends Michael Steele on Wild Porn, Bondage, Commie Ride

This week, the RNC tried to make the Internet conservative. It was not a resounding success. Instead, a series of hilarious and fairly predictable misfortunes sent a tiny, animated Michael Steele on a wild ride to a bunch of porn, bondage and Communist websites. Here’s what happened, from Wired:

As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It’s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.

Pranksters almost immediately began using the service to link to controversial or ironically intended websites, such as the official site of the American Communist Party, a bondage website and a webpage advertising a sex toy in the likeness of Barack Obama. GOP.am apparently started blocking such links at some point Tuesday morning, and the GOP.am homepage was taken offline.

[...]

... unlike bit.ly, GOP.am includes a toolbar at the top of the screen that follows users as they click through to see whatever pages the links go to. It also sports an animation of RNC chairman Michael Steele walking around on the lower right as if he’s showing off the website — particularly awkward when that website is the alt.com bondage site. Users of the Balloon-Juice website entertaineLd each other last night by exchanging scores of such links, which have since been blocked.

When I tried to make some porn conservative, the site said the link was broken, so it looks like they're on it. But, here's a screenshot from Balloon Juice if you feel the need to have Michael Steele's enthusiastic approval of your taste in porn: