Over at my little spot on this Internet, The Blue Pages (www.matthewjerome.blogspot.com), I've been putting up a particularly unbearable political ad up each Thursday for the aptly named "Bad Ad Thursday." There is certainly no shortage of them this election season.
I'm a partisan, but bad ads know no partisanship. Whether you've got an R or a D next to your name, you are equally capable of looking like a buffoon once that camera is rolling. But challenger Vernon Robinson (R), who is running for Brad Miller's (D) seat in the fightin' 13th of North Carolina, has stolen the show with this jaw-dropper. It is quite possibly the baddest ad of them all. (Sorry, that should be "most baddest.")
Watch the YouTube on my blog: http://matthewjerome.blogspot.com/...
And then, if you aren't too nauseated, feel free to There's-More-on-over to my line-by-line debunking.
He ought to be ashamed of this ad. Maybe he is, let me check his website. . . . "See the Ad Everyone is Talking About!" Hmm. Well, maybe he's secretly ashamed.
Anyways, just about every line in this ad deserves a response.
A) "If you are a conservative Republican, watching news these days can make you feel like you're in the Twilight Zone." Oh yeah? Why's that? Is it because conservative Republicans have the presidency? Or is it because they have both of the houses of Congress? Or because 7 out 9 of the Supreme Court Justices were appointed by Republicans? Or because they have a majority of the governorships? Or because they have a majority of the lower circuit court judgeships? 'Cause those are the reasons that I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. So please, Vernon, tell me why conservatives feel that way.
B) "Homosexuals are mocking holy matrimony and the lesbians and feminists are attacking everything sacred." Here's the point at which we all went, Oh, so it's gonna be this kind of ad. What do I say here that isn't obvious? I don't call homosexuals wanting to publicly declare their monogamous love and lifelong commitment to each other "mocking holy matrimony," but hey, potatos, potatos. (Hmm, that potatos thing doesn't work too well if you are writing it. Hopefully you know which syllables I'm emphasizing). And I have to say, that's the first picture I've seen of lesbians and feminists (who I guess must be mentioned in the same breath since they are women and, ya know, want equal rights) "attacking everything sacred."
C) "Liberal judges have completely rewritten the constitution." Oh really? The Constitution looks the same to me. It hasn't changed since the twenty-seventh amendment limited Congressional pay raises in 1992. But of course, the new Republican talking point is to attack these so-called liberal judges that don't really exist.
A little tangent here, but let's follow the whole liberal judge argument. Assume that Democrats vote for liberal judges and Republicans vote for conservative judges. This is an oversimplification, obviously, but something close to this may be true, and it is helpful in illustrating a point. Ok. So, in the last 26 years, only 8 of those years have had a Democratic President, which is less than 1/3 of the time, so less than 1/3 of those appointees would've been liberal. Then, factor in that during the 8 years Clinton was President, 6 of those years the judges would have had to have been confirmed by 2/3 vote in a Republican Senate. Also, keep in mind that Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and did not even schedule hearings for some of Clinton's appointed judges.
So, when conservatives talk about liberal judges, they are talking about judges that, over the past 26 years, would either have to have been appointed by a Republican president or confirmed by a Republican in Senate in 24 of those 26 years. Did Clinton just ram thousands of flag-burning, gay-loving, tree-hugging judges from 1992-1994, and they are the ones ruining everything today? Gimme a break. So my point is, if Republicans are actually mad about liberal judges, they have as much guilt for that as the Democrats.
The truth is, there are very few liberal judges. Republicans just call judges liberal if those judges INTREPRET THE LAW in a way that doesn't fit their ideological extremist mold.
Ok. Let's continue.
D) "You can burn the American flag and kill 1 million babies a year . . . " Are we killing 1 million babies a year? Or are they referring to a week-old clump of cells as a baby? I guess they are putting all abortions in that category. But it is a tad disingenuous, then, to show a picture of a nearly full-grown fetus, clearly 8 or 9 months old, when third-trimester abortions are illegal! That is, our country does NOT abort babies of the size in Robinson's picture. According to the Center for Disease Control in 2005, "The CDC estimates that 60.5 percent of legal abortions occur within the first eight weeks of gestation, and 88.5 percent are performed within the first 12 weeks. Only 1.4 percent occur after 20 weeks."
E) " . . . but you can't post the 10 commandments or say 'God' in public." (Cue children: "One nation . . . under . . . Huh!!). Remember when I said this ad had some outright lies in it? Here they are, 3 quick ones. Here is a little lesson. A) You CAN post the 10 commandments in public. B) You CAN say "God" in public. C) Children say the pledge in EVERY SCHOOL, EVERY DAY, and all of the pledges contain the words "One Nation, Under God." If Vernon Robinson doesn't know that, I wouldn't vote for him for sanitation commissioner.
F) "Seven out of 10 black children are born out of wedlock, and [Jesse] Jackson and [Al] Sharpton claim the answers are racial quotas." A million Blue Page dollars to the person who finds me a quote where Jackson and Sharpton say that the answer to black children being born out of wedlock is racial quotas. Also, here we go with the liberal bogeyman again. Hasn't anyone told Vernon Robinson that Jackson and Sharpton aren't in power, and that their views have nothing to do with the direction of Congress?
Also, I should say that I don't think he's racist against blacks--after all, he himself is an African-American. But he is trying to bank on racism of some in his district, which is pretty dispicable
G) "And the aliens are here, but they didn't come in a spaceship, they came across our unguarded border, by the millions." Inaccurate, our border is guarded. Maybe I'm nitpicking and saying that he should be clearer (he could argue that it is inadequately guarded), but the average person voting in this election might think it is actually, literally, unguarded, which is false. Think VR finds those distinctions important?
H) "I'm Vernon Robinson. If you send me to Congress, I'll send that back to the twilight zone." Really. Even if I accept your premise--which I don't--that liberals are responsible for all these bad things, what does your presence in Congress change? Why weren't the current Republican House, Senate, and presidency, able to prevent all of these liberal things, and why are you going to succeed?
I) "I approve of this message, and of traditional American values." Like I said, the only values I saw in this ad were racism, sexism, homophobia, immigrant-bashing, and dishonesty. That's not the America I know, and those are traditions I want abolished.
J) A Leave-it-to-Beaver clip at the end. How cute. But you've gotta be kidding.
Is this really gonna work? How many Ann Coulter fans really live in NC-13? Love to have your thoughts, and feel free to stop on by The Blue Pages as well.