You really had to believe that the Census Bureau couldn't do any worse than those horrifically bad commercials featuring Ed Begley, Jr.
You would be wrong:
Author and former George W. Bush adviser Karl Rove will appear in a new public service announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau designed to convince people to mail back their 2010 census forms by the end of the month.
In an e-mail, Rove said he agreed to participate, "Because the Census settles apportionment of Congress and the current distrust of Washington should not discourage people from being counted."
Rove's script, in part, references the role of James Madison in the fashioning of the census and helpfully points out to paranoid right-wingers that the questions asked in the 2010 census are not dramatically different than those asked in the original census in 1790.
It is worth pointing out that the Census Bureau is also utilizing National Council of Negro Women President Dorothy Height in an ad designed to boost flagging participation rates in heavily-minority urban areas.
Needing to boost minority participation in the United States Census is an imperative every time it is conducted. These groups have historically proven difficult to count, for a variety of reasons that are primarily socioeconomic in nature.
Giving equal importance to assuaging right wing fears and, indirectly, assigning a level of validity to their anti-government conspiracy theories is galling, to say the least.
(Bob Johnson has further thoughts on the Rove Census plea.)