In an unlikely development, a year-and-a-half-old lecture on digital culture delivered by the world’s best-known academic on cyber-rights has morphed into a mini-scandal in the Republican media echo-chamber. The flap looks like a small rhetorical trial balloon for how the Republicans might try to frame Obama’s image for voters should he win the Democratic presidential nomination.

The flap involves radio host Rush Limbaugh, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig and the leading conservative weblog Redstate. Whether it gains further traction or not could turn out to be a test of whether voters really want a new kind of non-partisan politics Obama talks about, or whether they will bite and stick to the extreme partisan politics-as-usual formula practiced by media outlets like Redstate and Limbaugh.

On Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show picked up an item from Redstate that bashed Lessig for showing a video that depicts Jesus singing Gloria Gaynor’s "I Will Survive," and then getting hit by a bus. Lessig had delivered a talk at Google’s New York City offices last October about remix culture, and had used the mash-up to illustrate a point during the talk. (The Redstate post was made on the eve of a senate hearing on net neutrality and urged its readers to call the senate commerce committee to complain about Google and Lessig.)

The clip of Limbaugh mentioning RedState’s post was blogged by Redstate blogger Caleb Howe on Tuesday. During the clip, Limbaugh tries to portray Lessig as a close Obama advisor, and an extremist who is out of touch with mainstream American culture:

"Erick Erickson, a friend of mine who runs Redstate.com, points out an anti-Christian video recently introduced with great frivolity by internet philosopher Larry Lessig. Now this is just another Obama adviser, just another guy close to Obama. But we’re not supposed to make anything of that. This guy’s video is, is, is … well it’s a video of a gay, singing Jesus who gets hit by a bus. This is Obama’s technical adviser, who also has ties to Google. As Warner Todd Huston of Newsbusters points out, the worst thing about this is that this is also another scandal involving a Barack Obama campaign associate showing his disdain for the American mainstream, this time a disdain to

Christianity. It turns out that this Lessig guy, this Larry Lessig is a somewhat secretive Obama campaign adviser, serving to assist the campaign on internet and technology policies and Erick Erickson points out, Lessig hosts Obama’s tech policy on his own lessig.org web site and Obama’s campaign has regularly cited this guy as a key supporter on technology issues and made sure that Lessig was quoted when listing Obama’s technology endorsers. So once again it’s another illustration of a close Obama associate, radical and out of the mainstream totally. ‘Well I didn’t know he was doing those things,’ Obama will probably say, if anybody dares to bring it up …"

Lessig says in an interview that he chose the video as part of a series of several different kinds of examples of controversial mash-ups that he shows during his talks about remix culture. For example, he showed another controversial video during the 2004 election about then

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

He also distanced himself from the Obama campaign. Much of his activity has been limited to providing occasional advice on technology policy issues, and to participating in events organized by volunteers, he says.

"They have this picture in their mind that it’s me and my best buddy Barack," he says, but "the contact that I’ve had is just as someone giving advice on tech policy — I’m not on the campaign."

He adds: "I’m not being secretive — I’ve been totally open about my relationship with the Obama campaign — in fact

I’m trying not to overstate my relationship to it."

Limbaugh’s commentary echoes that of other Republicans on Obama in the past few days.

Arizona senator and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain on a

Sunday morning political television show blasted Obama for his relationship with Willam Ayers, a former member of the Weather

Underground. And several Republicans in locations around the country have sought to portray votes for Democratic candidates as votes for

Obama, who is variously portrayed as an elitist, extremist or out of touch.

The line of attack taps an undercurrent of worry over Obama’s fundamental identity, his religious beliefs, and his allegiance to the United States. So far during the campaign, much of that narrative has unfolded online through an underground e-mail campaign and commentary on obscure right-wing blogs.

Limbaugh’s attack on Obama by cherry-picking for discussion a sensational video instead of looking at the more substantive and nuanced issue of network neutrality — the backdrop subject of

Erickson’s post — echoes the attacks of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s on the DailyKos last summer, when he attacked the site and its founder for comments made by readers.

The video at issue is below:

Jesus Christ: The Musical

Photo: Associated Press/Gary He

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