Aside from being a funny romp through the county that lies in the shadow of Your Nation’s Capital, this represents an almost textbook case of viral marketing.  Posted on Thursday, the video made the rounds pretty quickly on Friday.  I got the link almost simultaneously from two different friends – who, incidentally, do not know each other.  That was followed quickly by an email from another friend, and later, an email from a friend in St. Louis who used to work with me in Arlington.  By the end of the day, almost everyone I talked to – coworkers, softball teammates – had seen this video.

Why?  Well, the producers obviously did a good job pushing it out through Twitter, Facebook, and email.  Their timing was perfect – the Thursday release meant that office workers could (and would) spend their Friday morning watching, laughing, and clicking “forward.”  They used recognizable landmarks from areas that had a mix of residences and businesses, meaning the video was highly recognizable. And they poked fun at behaviors you see on full display in Arlington, such as jogging in place at a traffic light, avoiding the Green Line, and of course the plethora of Starbucks locations.

But most importantly, the video is hilarious.  If you want to go viral, content is – as always – king.

This appeared yesterday on @EFCANOW, the Twitter stream of an organized labor outfit called American Rights at Work (an organization which, paradoxically, seeks to limit your right to a secret ballot if you and your fellow workers vote on unionization):

The Huffington Post article mentioned previous attempts by security guards for more safety equipment.  In and of itself, this is an interesting and salient point: do we do enough to protect museum security guards?

It really has nothing to do with whether those guards are in a union or not, but that didn’t stop proponentsof the Employee Free Choice Act from trying to use the slaying of a security guard to advance an unrelated legislative agenda.

Unfortunately for @EFCANOW, Twitter doesn’t let you delete tweets anymore.  So when they realized their mistake later in the day, they had to scramble to make up for it.  They posted a second time, distancing themselves from the article – followed in rapid succession by several tweets much more relevant to the issue of forced unionization.

Is it sick?  Yes.  But since Big Labor’s fingerprints are all over American Rights at Work, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at their insensitivity to violence.

The mantle for the concept of unstoppable Democratic momentum is now squarely on the shoulders of Virginia’s Creigh Deeds.  If Deeds is the next governor of Virginia, then the story this November will be the continuing collapse of the Republican party; victories in Virginia and possibly New Jersey will go a long way toward changing the subject.  But while these states will have a big effect on the conversation in Washington, the opposite may not be true.

Colin Delany at ePolitics makes a good case that the selection of Deeds indicates a dissatisfaction with the incumbent political class among Democrats.  Consider that Deeds bested not only former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, but also Brian Moran who has been a prominent Northern Virginia figure (both for his own work and for that of his brother). Clearly, Virginia Democrats did not feel like their support was an entitlement for either candidate.

The elections in Virginia and New Jersey will continue to be big news in 2009 as pundits try to read the tea leaves for the 2010 and 2012 elections.  But as Deeds’s upset showed, state voters may have more important things on their mind than how their decisions will play in other cities along I-95.

Tim Carney is as insightful a journalist as you’ll find in Washington, D.C., seeing connections where others allow conventional wisdom to draw conclusions for them.  He wrote a book about the link between big government and big business, writing about how large, corporate behemoths welcome excess government regulation because their smaller competitors can’t afford it.

As GM announces that bits and pieces are being sold off, Carney finds one piece that’s safe: General Motors, buoyed by taxpayer funds, will keep their lobbying operation open.  (I suppose this is another loophole in the Obama “no lobbyists working for the administration” rule.)

Congratulations, average American – you finally have a lobbyist working for you!