Ever since June, when I come home from a hard day in the emerald mine with the dwarfs I sit down in the old coot ™ recliner chair to watch the 6:00 news, find out what tomorrow’s weather might be, get the latest wild-eyed speculation about the Hawkeyes, learn of the latest horrific traffic accident/abandon baby/ribbon cutting and what do I get–I get political advertisements interspersed with an occasional pitch for soy bean herbicides and unbelievable deals on automobiles I can’t afford. At first it wasn’t too bad. We got videos of the candidate surrounded by his kids and loving spouse gazing bravely into a crimson sunset with a view of the candidate’s hometown in the back ground with water tower and church spires silhouetted against the shinning horizon. Never mind that the candidate fled this hell-hole of a one-horse town 20 years ago to make his fortune in the big city and hasn’t been back since.
Then we passed on to the more pointed ad which told us that the candidate would work hard to uphold the American Way, illustrated by showing the candidate getting a haircut or dragging a bail of hay to some State Fair winning cow, or standing around with a bunch of nursing home inmates while looking dreadfully earnest (or maybe practicing the “smell the fart” method of acting)
Right after Labor Day, there was a scattering of snipping–ads that suggested that maybe the candidate was not all he was cracked up to be. At the same time the two candidates who were physicians and surgeons in a former life began appearing on their own ads in white lab coats with a stethoscope wrapped around their neck (all very touching and persuasive–look, he has a stethoscope, let’s send him to Congress). Clearly balderdash but nothing that caused bleeding from the ears.
In the last week or so the level of vitriol has really been cranked up. We have ads screaming invective for 10 minutes out of every 20. We have been told that one candidate for the Senate’s statement that he expected to see human cloning in his lifetime is so out outrageous that it appeared on The X Files; that a candidate for governor is personally responsible for a school bus factory closing down; that a candidate for Congress has been found by a judge to be unbelievable under oath; that everybody is misrepresenting everybody else’s record and statements; that all GOP candidates want to privatize social security; that all Demos want to raise taxes; that everybody is in bed with some special interest or another; that everybody is a lying and untrustworthy SOB. It is just a constant cacophony of blather and near slander based on half truth, quarter truth and, as often as not, just plain untruth. It has gotten so bad that one candidate has publicly asked his party’s political action group to back off because their ads are dishonest and insulting. The answer was that the election was too important for the candidate to tell them what to do. So far as I know no one has yet been accused of bank robbery or child abuse but I almost expect that revelation tomorrow.
No wonder this country gets the abysmal voter turn out it does. No wonder a fair hunk of the electorate thinks that political candidates are all crooks and liars. Enough, for the love of all that is decent and wholesome, enough! Have the damned election! Shut up and leave me alone!
How do you think I feel? I live in a border town (WI), and all our TV programming comes from the Twin Cities (MN). I have to sit through ad after ad for candidates I can’t even vote for!
Very sick of all the political ads, but until then thank goodness for satellite programming.
Yes, this election does seem a tad more hysterical than the last. Like ** Boscibo**, I live next to Minnesota (On the other border, North Dakota) so I get to listen to their political ranting as well as our own. We have one congressional seat up for election. Incumbent is a Dem, and the Republican is currently the state Tax Commissioner. So far the Republican rhetoric seems a bit more vitriolic than the Democratic rhetoric. All in all, I think I am going to write in Pat Paulson when I vote. I know he’s dead and all, but he just seems like a better man for the job than either of these “professional” politician dweebs.
Hell, I live in CANADA and I want you guys to get it over with. I am constantly shocked at the lengths which people’ll go to in commercials to discredit the other candidates.
Try living in Colorado. Every Election Year we have Wayne Allard against Tom Strickland. They start the vitriol filled ads in August. We have to listen to their shit spewing for 3 months. This year the race is getting National attention so they have picked up the pace on their attack ads, I would estimate that between 1/4 and 1/6 of all ads is during prime time is for one of these two yahoos.
So what is the latest wild-eyed speculation about the Hawkeyes? Are there roses in our future or what? I’m sick to death of the Alamo Bowl.
I remember Iowa’s political ads as pretty mean. My working theory was that paid media must be cheap, so by the time you’ve got much budget for back-and-forth ads, the rhetoric really gets cranked up.
Of course, one of those negative ads in '98 was so bad that it backfired on the Republican candidate for governor, who quickly managed to blow a 12-point lead and hand the governor’s mansion over to the democrats for the first time in 16 years. It would appear the lesson has not been learned.
I go to school in Pennsylvania, but I can’t vote in the state. For the last year now (basically ever since Tom Ridge was appointed to the Homeland Security position), there has been these two jerks yelling at each other while running for governor. I don’t even know who they are, and I’m starting to think that anyone who would vote for either of them must be nuts.
asterion, tell me about it! First we had the two Democratic candidates sticking poisoned daggers into each other during primary season, then the Dem and Rep candidates broke out the inter-party misericordes and started sinking them in.
I’m waiting eagerly for Election Day. Not so much so I can vote one or the other in, but so the damn ads will stop for two more years!
Although I do think Fisher is running much more nasty ads than Rendell.