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Can You Out-Mean the Professional Meanies?
In a riff on the analogy about a million monkeys at a million keyboards replicating Shakespeare’s greatest works, Andrew Sullivan challenges readers to try their hand at producing political attack ads with at least some basis in reality/fact.
His goal — to take first-mover advantage away from the professional attack class — is laudable, although I have my doubts (as Sullivan does) about how this experiment will turn out.
Regardless, let’s chalk one up for Andrew in the “creative suggestions” column, and — if you’re so inclined — contribute to the effort.
14 Responses to “Can You Out-Mean the Professional Meanies?”
At first I thought the Larry Sinclair story was one of those manufactured piles of tripe that someone released to meanly discredit poor Obama (I used to support him). But after I read the different accounts, I became alarmed that they appear credible enough to be used against him.
More alarming still was that in my investigations I learned that the media also considered the story credible, but was holding it back…for some reason..
Putting two and two together, with my “inside information” that the GOP means to first promote Obama over Hillary (their real and feared enemy) and then when she's officially out of the way, plans to disembowel him, it suddenly dawned on me. “They're going to release the Sinclair story as “credible” to mainstream just after Denver.”
Which of course would instantly extinguish any democratic hope for a win this Fall by totally an irrevocably annihilating the entire middle vote for Obama. And this fits with McCain's apparent ambilavence and sloppiness in running his current campaign..: the lassitude of a man who knows without a shadow of a doubt that he's going to win…
In the Sinclair case, it doesn't matter as much that it is true, but rather that it can be made to SEEM true to the right numbers of people, in the right demographics at just the right moment.
What do they have to make the story SEEM true? Larry Sinclair's video tape with passed polygraph test, three murdered gay men with strong circumstantial evidence (at least surficially linking their deaths to their alleged relationships with Obama), a phone record of calls made by one of the murdered men to Larry Sinclair just before the man was found murdered, execution-style (upholding a connection between Sinclair's polygraph-proof video and dead gay men at Obama's church)…and so on…
There are also reports from the Chicago police department and one quote from an investigator that he believes Obama is linked to the murders in order to silence leaks about his alledged homosexuality.
These aren't things I'm making up, they are things that exist and can be googled right now.
Interestingly with the high-profile of these murders, I couldn't find anything on them by running The Chicago Tribune's search engines….I suppose they're just down…? They'd report those stories….right? You'd think? I mean, it happened in their city? To a high-profile citizen's controversial-church members…? The Tribune has something on those murders…dont' they? I'm sure I read articles about this on their website. See if you can find them there..
These men did die, didn't they? There ARE three corpses from Obama's church since his campaign took off last Fall…right? Did someone fabricate these high-profile deaths just to discredit Obama? Corpses are real, aren't they??
It just keeps getting weirder and weirder…
Actually, the overdone positive (hype, adoration, all the way to worship) for Obama by his media quasi-campaigners is now hurting, too.
http://people-press.org/report/441/obama-fatigue
Sil wins.
Hmmm…but really, what Andrew Sullivan wants here are ads that criticize McCain, and support his fave Obama.
Consider this line: “I really don't want to give Steve Schmidt that kind of satisfaction, do you? I don't want to live through another lame, predictable bout of Britney-mania . . . “
Schmidt, of course, was behind that “lame, predictable” ad (really, so Andrew Sullivan “predicted” the celeb meme) that went viral . . . scored well over a million hits . . . and impacted Obama's poll advantage. Pretty good, for a “lame” ad.
“The idea is not to produce crude and ugly smears or lies.”
These are, of course, subjective judgements. Andrew Sullivan — to his credit — denounced the front-page NYT story alleging McCain's extramarital affair on no evidence as an ugly smear. Most journalists agreed with Sullivan. Many Democrats, however . . . even here at TMV. . . considered it hard hitting investigative journalism.
I would expect the anti-McCain attack ads in this campaign to outnumber the anti-Obama by . . . say 10-1.
Everything is legitimate when criticizing McCain . . . his teeth, his disability, everything.
Conversely, everything is illegitimate when criticizing Obama . . . there is a picture of Obama with a white woman . . . obviously racism.
Murdered gay men in Chicago?
Honestly, Sil, if all of that had been true . . . why didn't Hillary Clinton use it?
Admittedly, this is a bizarre standard. But I feel she would stop at nothing to take down Obama in the primaries. Plus, the Clintons' spend megabucks on private detectives and have files on all sorts of people. Has been Clinton SOP since the 92 campaign.
If Obama was part of all of this, I am sure HRC would know, and would have used it against him.
She didn't . . . ergo he wasn't. (I am open to opposing arguments on this…but it seems sound to me.)
People like to discredit the Sinclair story as fabricated hype. I was one of them. Unfortunately, the story has teeth and the GOP is onto it.
All it will take is a release. When rebutting it, we'd do well to examine the facts that exist in the allegations and tailor an answer that will convince people as much as a passed polygraph test and phone records..
It would be prudent for democrats who still support Obama to assemble a conherant and honest reply to these allegations that will be coming…
Marlowe,
Obama hasn't generated any attacks on McCain personally. McCain, on the contrary, has. That's the truth of it.
I'm sure if there were examples of Obama smearing McCain, then Andrew would have brought them up.
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ChrisWWW: “Obama hasn't generated any attacks on McCain personally. McCain, on the contrary, has. That's the truth of it. “
You are quite right. It is interesting that Obama has, to date, resisted the complaints of many Democrats that he go negative. I suspect he is right in this regard.
His surrogates and allies, however, have roasted McCain. Oddly, they seem gobsmacked by the McCain ads.
Silhouette . . . I really don't think the GOP would touch that stuff. Not even Limbaugh or talk radio. Look, the MSM has avoided the Edwards Love Child business to date. But the stuff you are talking about is radioactive.
Again, it is my view that the most ruthless figure in this presidential season is HRC by a country mile. If there had been anything, she would have used it against Obama.
Marlowe,
It's best not to engage Sil, our very own single-minded troll. It's amazing how Larry Sinclair manages a mention in 90% of the threads on this site since Sil joined…
I got one. A little old lady drives up to the gas station and obama comes out in his best steve Martin white gas suit.
“Filler up?” Obama Asks?
“No” The little old lady ponders looking at her empty wallet….”Just check the tire pressure please.”
Whip Under-Inflation Now!
“His surrogates and allies, however, have roasted McCain”
Anything that backfires, Obama (“removed” from it all) says “was a mistake” later.
“His surrogates and allies, however, have roasted McCain”
Funny, seems McCain surrogates are doing the same thing to Obama, before the start of his character attacks, anyway.
DLS: McCain's version is, “They don't speak for me. I speak for me.”