Thank you for your service, remember to wash your hands.
Great link!
So, not even the chief pissboy…
I can’t believe I’m going to defend DeSantis, who is a fascist threat worse than Trump, but here I am. On my cake day, no less.
First, I don’t think he’s seriously portraying himself as a Navy aviator. It’s just a stupid ad. (A really stupid ad) If he dressed up as Superman you wouldn’t think he is really claiming to have superpowers.
He was in the JAG corps. He’s never claimed otherwise. I suppose at some point he assisted with urinalysis. Somebody has to. But he did a lot of other stuff. They don’t recruit lawyers and have them spend all their time doing low level med tech stuff.
I don’t care that he spent a little time helping with urinalysis. Again, someone has to. I do care that there are credible reports that he participated in torture sessions, at least as an observer.
He’s not coming out a saying it, but he’s certainly hoping that people will infer it. People hear that he was in the Navy, see this ad, and put two and two together.I doubt that most of the American public knows what a JAG is, and if asked would think that it was something cool like Jet Aviation Gunner.
Y’all are forgetting there used to be a TV show titled JAG where the lead character was a JAG who was also a fighter pilot, had a hot female JAG Marine partner, and his boss was a JAG admiral who was a SEAL?
Florida Man probably loved it.
I don’t think there is much to read into that commercial any more than it’s just red meat for the rubes. As long as it looks like tough-guy DeSantis pwned the libs, no one will check anything else for accuracy. He could be lying outright about something and no one will care any more. The commercial is to appeal to the same kind of idiots that voted for, and continue to back, people like George Santos. Truth and facts have no meaning here - libs got pwned so they are gonna cheer.
I hear Navy and I think “sailor”, as most people will. Because that’s what most of the Navy is. If the ad was trying to imply that he was an actual fighter pilot, they did a pretty poor job of doing that.
I’m the last person to defend Ron on anything, but this seems like a huge stretch to me.
Except to the fans of Top Gun, which the ad is specifically referencing, in which the boats of the Navy are only a backdrop for the fighter planes. Yes they never actually said he was a fighter pilot, and the Willie Horton ad never mentioned Mr Horton’s race.
I don’t think that you’re going to find a lot of people informed enough to know that Top Gun is part of the Navy (as you pointed out, the planes are first and foremost) and that Ron was in the Navy, and yet just leap to believing he was a fighter pilot. That’s assuming a person is able to make a bunch of informed connections while missing something even more important.
If there was some suggestion in those films that Ron himself was a real pilot I’d be on board with this theory, but there wasn’t. It was just piggybacking on the popularity of the film, especially among neocons and their ilk.
Now, I see some people comparing him to Dukakis and his ridiculous tank stunt, and I think that’s a pretty good way to think of it. It’s still really dumb.
Just to clarify, his ad and the imagery he’s using based off of it is really dumb.
But that’s what DeSantis and Florida Republicans would want - more MAGAts.
How does such “revenge” work if it’s what they want?
That much depends on whether the ad connects and whether there is an effective counter-ad for it.
I don’t think there’s anyone out there who was going to vote against DeSantis who watched that ad and went “Well, I disliked him, but now that I learned he was a top gun aviator, taking out dangerous heavily guarded nuclear refineries while teaching a bunch of young pilots and reconciling with son of a man who died under his command, he’s got my vote!”
A miserable being seeking any justification for their meaningless existence will grasp at the opportunity to identify with a strong man (like the guy they saw in the movie)
The world runs on bullshit
But they’d already be voting for DeSantis, which was my point. No one who isn’t voting for DeSantis will have their mind changed by the add.
ETA: I’m a miserable being with a meaningless existence and I ain’t voting for the dude.
I agree for the most part. But, the military image does add legitimacy, and it backs up his patriotic act. It’s more a matter of nudging fence sitters than changing minds.
There are more people who pay no attention to politics than we–who do pay attention to politics–realize. Many, many more.
An ad that sells the image ‘Ron DeSantis is a Manly Man who was a Heroic Military Aviator’ may be the only political information many voters have.
And they may well vote accordingly.
So: yes. That ad was deliberately misleading–and may well help DeSantis win. Because millions of people who are registered to vote, know NOTHING else about DeSantis. (Obviously they don’t consume or ever see any media that would have shown them DeSantis in his Princess-Barbie Boots, for example.)
Unprovable, but I doubt it.
A bigger piece of political information, or at least politically relevant information, almost all voters will have is how the economy seems to be affecting them.
If the ad has has value — and a lot of ads do not— it think it has to do with DeSantis talking down U.S. aid to Ukraine. In as much as such talk makes Ron sound weak, the fake airman thing might counteract that.
What with the television shows glorifying his military occupation, shouldn’t DeSantis want to brag about what he actually did in the service? Or does he want to distract attention from his apparently having sometimes been military defense counsel? It’s very very wrong to attack a lawyer for defending unpopular defendants, but there must be some amoral oppo researcher checking into it.
What do you call a military ambulance chaser? A helicopter chaser?
I agree that virtually all voters—even the “low information” ones—do think about how they’re doing in the current economy when they vote.
Blaming the current President, in ANY year, for the price of gas is as American as over-priced apple pie.