WASHINGTON, DC?In the latest round of political mudslinging, both John Kerry's and George W. Bush's election committees have replaced ads that focus on their opponents' shortcomings with ads that personally insult the voting public.
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Ignored One.
New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly
by ignored_one 9 Replies latest social current
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ignored_one
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ignored_one
Not sure why it wouldn't work. Let's try again.
WASHINGTON, DC?In the latest round of political mudslinging, both John Kerry's and George W. Bush's election committees have replaced ads that focus on their opponents' shortcomings with ads that personally insult the voting public.
"The Bush people initiated this volley of negative ads, but we won't be lured into a reactive campaign against the Republicans," Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said Monday. "It's time to redirect the cheap name-calling away from Bush and toward those Americans who might be idiotic enough to vote for him."
A controversial 30-second TV spot for Kerry that aired throughout the Midwest Monday blamed the country's ills not on Bush's policies, but on the "sheer stupidity" of America's voters.
"In the past four years, America's national debt has reached an all-time high," the ad's narrator said. "And who's responsible? You are. You're sitting there eating a big bowl of Fritos, watching TV, and getting fatter as the country goes to hell. You ought to be ashamed of yourself."
Over a series of images of America's senior citizens, the narrator of another 30-second spot says, "The Medicare drug bill is a triumph of right-wing ideology masquerading as moderate reform. The pharmaceutical-drug and insurance industries are tickled pink. Guess who's paying for it? You. Congratulations, moron. I'm John Kerry and I approved this message."
The Bush-Cheney 2004 camp recently began airing an anti-voter ad in 20 major urban areas nationwide.
"Are you going to vote for a candidate whose campaign promises would cost America $1.9 trillion over the next decade?" the ad asks. "Of course you aren't. You aren't going to vote at all. In the last election, half of you didn't even show up. So, on Nov. 2, just spend the day right there at your dead-end office job, talking to your coworkers about your new sweater and e-mailing your friends photos of your stupid 2-year-old daughter you shouldn't have had."
The ad concludes: "You make me sick."
Both ad campaigns met with cries of outrage from viewers in all demographic groups, and were therefore deemed successful.
"I don't pay my taxes so some suit in Washington can get on national television and call me a clown," said Bobbie Lee, a 35-year-old mechanic from Detroit. "Those Kerry ads piss me off so bad. So what if my teeth are stained? So what if I do wear sweatsocks? Everyone I show the videotape to gets just as mad. Just who does Kerry think he is? Before last week, I didn't even know his name."
"That Bush ad said that I should wake up to the fact that I'm trapped in a loveless marriage," said 29-year-old Kathlene Richmond, an account executive from West Virginia. "But the Republicans don't understand Larry. He's just not very communicative. You don't think the GOP is right, do you?"
Based on the success of the TV ads, both campaigns have announced plans to attack voters through other media, as well.
New direct-mail campaigns will solicit contributions with such slogans as "Fork over some of your paycheck to Kerry. Or are you too cheap?" and "One in 25 Americans donated money to a national political campaign in 2003. One in three Americans subscribed to cable television. Pathetic."
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ApagaLaLuz
Ouch! I havent seen any of these ads. But one would think it's not good politics to make such an Ad. Kind of hard to believe.
But as for thecomments directed at those who dont vote, they are stupid if they want to complain about the government if they dont exercise their right to vote
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Celia
From The Onion I presume....
edited, cause it is from and not fron....
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blacksheep
I am highly suspicious that these so called ads aired. Sounds like a hoax.
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blacksheep
Oh, yeah, and btw, Igored one, you didn't bother to cite any sources.
One wonders why.
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Celia
The Onion.........
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ignored_one
I was going to include my source honest.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63048,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2
Interesting article on times when The Onion has been taken a bit too seriously.
Onion Taken Seriously, Film at 11
By Daniel TerdimanStory location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,63048,00.html
02:00 AM Apr. 14, 2004 PT
The article in the Beijing Evening News told a shocking story of American hubris: Congress was behaving like a petulant baseball team and threatening to bolt Washington, D.C., unless it got a new, modern Capitol building, complete with retractable roof.
There was a problem with the story. Rather than do his own original reporting, Evening News writer Huang Ke had cribbed, nearly word for word, his text from an American publication. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Ke hadn't bothered to vet the source he had plagiarized: The Onion . At first, the Evening News stood by its story, demanding proof it wasn't true. It finally did apologize, but stubbornly tried to deflect blame for having been duped.
It wrote: "Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them with the aim of making money."
Carol Kolb, the editor of The Onion , the satirical publication that bills itself as "America's Finest News Source," jokes that the Evening News might not have been too far off-base with its defense.
"That's what we do at The Onion ," she laughs. "We do print lies to make money."
The case of the Evening News taking The Onion seriously is but Kolb's favorite example of something that happens constantly.
"People every single day think The Onion stories are real," says Kolb.
She cites another example. In September 2002, The Onion ran a piece called, "Al-Qaida Allegedly Engaging in Telemarketing." The piece told of the terrorist organization's nefarious plan to raise funds through various phone scams. It also showed screenshots of a videotape the CIA had uncovered in which al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is seen with a headset, presumably tricking an unsuspecting victim.
"We had known about al-Qaida's practice of raising money through drug trafficking and money laundering, but it seems the full scope of their depravity had barely been imagined," the story fictitiously quoted CIA Director George Tenet saying.
The regular Onion reader likely read the story, laughed and moved on. But to those unfamiliar with The Onion , such stories can be alarming.
Thus, upon seeing the story, the Branch County sheriff's department in Coldwater, Michigan, which had been investigating telemarketing scams targeting the elderly, issued an urgent press release.
"In the course of this investigation, it was learned that this is going on throughout the United States, and some of these telemarketing programs are believed to be operated by al-Qaida," the release stated. "The CIA has announced that they acquired a videotape showing al-Qaida members making phone solicitations for vacation home rentals, long-distance telephone service, magazine subscriptions and other products."
The joke was on the sheriff's department, which, after the release was written up in the local paper and hit the national wires, was bombarded with phone calls about the story.
"I was working on several telemarketing scams that were going on here with our elderly," says Branch County detective Dan Nichols, who wrote the release. "In researching this, I came across this story. I didn't have a source on the story. I hadn't heard of The Onion . It appeared to me to be a legitimate news story, so I passed (it) along."
That's part of why The Onion 's stories are so often taken for real news, says Kolb.
"I think that it has a lot to do with The Onion style," she says. "If we're doing our job right, we try to do it in a really straight, AP style. People aren't used to seeing their humor without a punch line."
To Nichols, the punch was in the gut.
"It felt like I'd been had," he remembers. "I was just kind of ticked off at myself for not verifying it before I passed it along, and not making sure it was satire. I have no problem with satire. I enjoy a good joke. I just hate it when it's on me."
It's not just detectives in small counties in Michigan who fall for Onion stories.
Kolb delights in how, last month, MSNBC reporter Deborah Norville went on air with news that more than half of all exercise done in the United States happens in TV infomercials for workout machines.
Norville neglected to mention her source: The Onion , of course. Norville did not return a call seeking comment.
Chris Taylor, the San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine, and a longtime Onion fan, says it shouldn't be difficult to tell that the publication is nothing but satire.
"If it wasn't, it would be chock-full of the biggest scoops in history," Taylor says. "As a true journalist, you have to be skeptical even about stories you see on the front page of The New York Times ."
Many people who mistakenly believe Onion stories do so in part because the stories are e-mailed around endlessly, often to the point where the source is no longer clear. But Taylor doesn't think much of that as an excuse.
"Average readers do themselves no disservice if they're skeptical about every news story they read," he says, "fake or not."
And it seems that one reason many people fall for Onion stories is that they're too close to the subject matter to see humor in it.
"Some people are so desperate for proof of their point of view, they'll seize upon any old e-mail forward that floats by," Taylor said.
As an example, Kolb points to a 2000 story titled, " Harry Potter Books Spark Rise in Satanism Among Children," which prompted some Christian groups to go nuts.
Indeed, an e-mail blasting Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling moved at light speed through fundamentalist groups online, decrying the books' satanic influence on children and Rowling's supposed pride at being behind it.
The e-mail further tried to whip up anti-Potter fury with the inclusion of an inflammatory Rowling quote from The Onion story.
"I think it's absolute rubbish to protest children's books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan," Rowling was said to have told a London Times reporter. "People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, and will suck the greasy cock of the Dark Lord while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory."
Kolb, of course, chuckles at the notion that anyone took the story seriously.
Then again, she says, after stories like "Chinese Woman Gives Birth to Septuplets: Has One Week to Choose" provoked prayer vigils on behalf of the six babies who would be tossed off a mountaintop, Kolb isn't surprised that The Onion gets regularly flooded with e-mails from people who didn't get the joke.
But Kolb says she and her staff don't write back.
"We don't respond to anyone, really, ever," she says. "We just laugh and laugh and laugh."
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Ignored One.
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blacksheep
The Onion????
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ignored_one
America's finest news source!!!!
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Ignored One.