Another offensive TV spot from Moveonpac.

The BBQ Pit
1

I just saw a TV commercial referencing the current filibuster battle in the Senate that really pissed me off…but not for the reason you might think.

For those of you who aren’t following, Republicans and Democrats are butting heads over judges. The Republicans are threatening to change the rules to allow limiting debate with a simple majority rather than 60 votes. This will prevent Democrats from filibustering judges they find ideologically offensive.

On to the commercial, which you can see at www.moveonpac.org. It’s title is “Radical Rampage”. Depending on your politics, you will either find it red meat or eye rolling material…except for the last two or three seconds. In the final scene. we see a lone man standing in the middle of the street, blocking a line of elephants.

This is an obvious reference to the courageous chinese man who stood in the way of the tanks coming into Tienamen Square in 1989.

Fuck you, you self-important shits. How dare you compare this political dispute with the courage of a man who certainly gave up his freedom if not his life to stand up for what he believed in.

If you think that your cause and dedication is equal to his, you are in need of immediate intervention to help you with your delusions of relevance and granduer.

If you don’t and thought “hey, this is a cool idea dudes!”, then you need to get some perspective and learn some respect for your betters.

By the way, someone will come in here and try to draw a comparison between the Chinese mans struggle with the current issue in the Senate and try to equate the two. They will try to say that the fate of millions depends on the courage of the Senate democrats, etc. They will be ignored. Anyone making that argument doesn’t get it any more than the idiots who put that ad together do.

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There’s a “talking point” out on this already. Wow, that was fast.

Fucking great commercial.

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I’d have preferred an ending that included a line of patriots with elephant guns.

4

Whaddaya worried, Eve? Your guys still have all the money, we just have the talent and brains. And a sense of humor. Of course, you can always run some old Mallard Fillmore animations, and maybe PJ O’Rourke talk about how he used to be a hippy, but now he has a drinking problem. Knee-slapping stuff!

By they by, have you seen MoveOn’s new Star Wars themed ad? If this one got your panties in a twist, the new one will set your hair on fire! Its a hoot! as they say in Kennebunkport.

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Or maybe the street sweeper guy from Rocky and Bullwinkle, busy, busy, busy sweeping up huge mounds of pachydermic talking points.

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Sorry, I just can’t get too worked up about this on the day that Rick Santorum said this on the Senate floor, in reference to the Democrats and their opposition to the Crybaby Option:

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Uhm that didn’t look anything like Tienamen Square.

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A Street Sweeper guy on Rocky and Bullwinkle?

:smack:
Yeah, either type would serve well.

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Evil One is just pissed because MoveOn is associating the Republican Party with the Communist Chinese – and he has no way to refute it…

"Remember that this entire political uproar is supposedly about originalism, the need for judges who will interpret the law and the constitution not according to our personal wishes or the political needs of the moment, but according to its original and long-settled meaning. That is, we’re told, their aim. And yet to accomplish this they (Senate Republicans) are quite happy to use a demonstrably bogus interpretation of the constitution to overturn two centuries of settled understanding of what the document means and requires.

“Before everyone’s eyes, everything about the constitution is subservient to their need for power.”
–Joshua Marshall

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The thing that pissed me off is the email they sent me trying to cash in on the opening of Star Wars.

Something about using “the Force” to stop Republicans from ending the filibuster and turning “the Republic into and Empire”.

We all know politics is shameless, but come on.

Shove their lame propoganda up the Dark Side, they should.

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Elucidator, please stop referring to Evil One as Eve. You’re confusing the hell out of me. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yeah, the commercial is stupid. :rolleyes: and all, but Santorum wins the prize as he godwinized the battle.

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As I expected and despite my attempts at preemption, you guys don’t get it.

I don’t care about the politics here. It’s the fact that some acts of courage should simply not be exploited. I would be just as pissed if the commercial featured donkeys.

We aren’t risking our lives blocking tanks, or storming a cockpit and giving our lives to save others here. We aren’t on the Berlin Wall.

This is an ideological dispute. I just think some things are incomparable and should be off limits to things like this.

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Sure you would. I think we all know you’d be in here defending it on the IOKIYAR principle.

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Ah, bullshit! You don’t care about the politics here? I would first say that the link between the commercial and the Tiananmen Square guy is tenuous, and also shares similarities with any of the “this far and no further” type propanganda posters from time immemorial (or to some extent the “defiance” poster I remember from a long time ago, with the little mouse giving the finger to the eagle swooping down upon him).

However, granting the assumption that they intended such a connection, I’m not sure how it is that very loosely invoking that imagery is damaging to the memory of that man. It isn’t like its a commercial with the tidy bowl man stopping some nasty line of toilet rings, rust stains and poop splatters. And it certainly isn’t like they took that guy’s picture and used it in the video.

In short, I think the only way that one blows a gasket on this is by being rabidly partisan to begin with. Or reading through partisan blogs to try to get fired up by the latest from the outrage machine.

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The hunh what?

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Evil One, don’t get all teenaged angst on us. I understand what you’re saying and yeah, I’m offended. It’s a stupid fucking commercial. Moveon has gotten entirely heavy handed and I wish they would just shut up.

However, Santorum has one-upped them by comparing the democrats to nazis. I’m sorry, but it’s hard to get too outraged by this when there is something even more outrageous, heavy handed, and idiotic going on.

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Your hypocrisy is staggering.

I acknowledge the truth of the “talking points” memo you’ve linked to: the “bogus interpretation” rjung refers to is the finding, out of whole cloth and in contradiction to the last hundred years of practice, that the Senate’s filibuster rule is unconstitutional. That is a lie, a sophistry, a dodge, a cheat. I agree completely.

Yet you, rjung, are perfectly happy when the Constitution is wrung out to find out of whole cloth, and in contradiction to the last hundred years (and more!) of practice, some new practice with which you agree.

  • Rick
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Hmmmph, conservative offensensitivity strikes again. They’re all lofty and contemptuous about “PC” and the “culture of victimhood” right up to the point where they feel insulted about something, and then they can squeal and whine as loud as any liberal on the planet.

Now, I understand how Evil One considers it insulting to have radical Republicans implicitly compared to PRC tanks,* but that’s a separate issue. Instead, he’s trying to argue that the use of this imagery is somehow an insult to the democracy demonstrators at Tiananmen.

That’s silly. The ad in no way mocks or insults the courage and sacrifice of the Chinese protestors. Quite the opposite: it’s a tribute or homage to it, attempting to use those powerful images of courage to inspire bravery elsewhere.

Now, you can certainly call bullshit on the analogy between the two situations, if that’s how it strikes you, and argue that it’s a ridiculous comparison. ( As has been pointed out, though, the party that lets Sen. Santorum get away with comparing the Democrats to Hitler doesn’t really have much room to complain about MoveOn comparing radical Republicans to the PRC.)

But arguing that the comparison is somehow insulting to the Tiananmen demonstrators, and that therefore everybody ought to be offended by it regardless of partisan biases, is absurd. Images of heroic moments are used to lend gravitas in more trivial contexts all the time.

Heck, ads for exterminators sometimes use images of soldiers and refer to their “war on bugs”. Is that an offensive degradation of the heroic sacrifices that actual soldiers have made in actual wars? No. It’s just a corny or kitschy appropriation of heroism to make oneself look good. Such people may be making horse’s butts out of themselves with their heavy-handed pompousness or parody, but they are in no way insulting the heroes whose mantle they are borrowing. If you think that sort of thing is intolerably insulting, you need to do a better job of shielding yourself from advertising and PR in general, because you are clearly too tender to handle it.

*Note, however, that the ad is also comparing “courageous” moderate Republicans to the brave Tiananmen protestors.

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Rick Santorum has just pulled ahead of Bill Frist in the race for Complete G.O.P. Jerk.

First there was the let’s-dump-the-National-Weather-Service move in favor of Accuweather, which just happens to give Rick campaign cash, now the Godwin thing.
What an ass.

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Jackmannii: Rick Santorum has just pulled ahead of Bill Frist in the race for Complete G.O.P. Jerk.

Hey, I still like DeLay in that race, but I agree that Santorum and Frist are both very strong competitors.