Not that I enjoy throwing cold water on a popular left-of-center idea, but this from Media Matters seems unfair for two basic reasons.
First, you get “free” airtime by airing an ad so outrageous that it forces the other guy to react or offends enough people that the reaction become news. The RNC ad warning people to vote ( R) or die a fiery death did a decent job of that, although I think that kind of nakedly frivolous scaremongering better deserves to be ignored. At this point, with the bloody hash that the GOP has made out of their “central front” in the terror war, it just looks silly. The DNC spot is a great ad but unless the GOP decides to get wooly about it I don’t see the ad earning more airtime than the DNC paid for. It isn’t clear that the major Dem committees even even know how to do outrageous.
Second. Look back at the Michael J. Fox-Rush Limbaugh flare-up and tell me how this is not a case of free airtime played perfectly. You have the outrageous, or at least highly memorable ad in an area, stem cell research, where publicity can do nothing but help the Democrats and hurt the Republicans. It can be hard for a great pol to avoid responding to a provocation like that, and Rush Limbaugh isn’t a great pol. Rush Limbaugh is a dimwitted sack of horse dung whose hamfisted reaction sent this ad into the proverbial free-airtime stratosphere. Now the story moves on to the controversy over Rush Limbaugh’s nutjob performance (C&L has the vid, of course) and which GOP luminaries will stand behind the talking dungheap.
News coverage of the Fox ad news may not have been that insightful or particularly “balanced,” but keep in mind that the RNC ad scored much more negative reviews. The value in free airtime is getting the ad up where people will see it and pushing the other team off message. To a point anyway the news copy per se is incidental.
As much as the corporate media has a GOP lapdog syndrome (believe me, I see it), in this cycle both sides have scored in the contest for free airtime. In my view the RNC lucked out with a bloop single while Claire McCaskill hit a solid drive to center-left field, and it’s still going.
r€nato
In my view the RNC lucked out with a bloop single while Claire McCaskill hit a solid drive to center-left field, and it’s still going.
…thanks (inadvertently) to Rush Limbaugh. Certainly McCaskill’s campaign didn’t count on the Fatuous Gasbag mouthing off the way he did.
Then again, perhaps by now we should just come to expect it. Put up someone who would be beyond criticism to any decent person – Michael J. Fox with Parkinson’s speaking out for stem-cell research, several distinguished retired generals speaking out against the way the Iraq war is being conducted, or a triple amputee Vietnam vet, or 9/11 widows…
…and just wait for the flying monkey right to slander them.
craigie
I think there is a great ad to be made out of the whole Rush gasbaggery, but, as you say, it probably isn’t in the DNC to make it. Or air it.
Pb
There is a media bias issue here–the media is biased towards sensationalism, for one, but that’s not the end of it. The Swift Boat Vets ad is probably the canonical example now of a small ad buy getting disproportionately way too much airplay. But the real issue is, how did that happen–David Brock had this to say:
Of course, you don’t have to take his word for it, the far right was gloating about it, really.
r€nato
Pb, that very dynamic was illustrated in Mike Rogers’ outing of Sen. Larry Craig. The Spokane newspaper – the very same newspaper which conducted an investigation which led to the public outing of Spokane mayor Jim West – held an editorial board meeting regarding the Craig story and one of the people present flat out stated that they would not have reported on the rumors of Craig’s homosexuality, but they were perfectly fine reporting on the ‘hubbub’ caused by a blog outing Craig.
Imperfectly stated but you get my point, I think. If enough people are talking about a topic, no matter how ridiculous it is, it becomes fair game for reporting.
If we can’t change the way the game is played, Dems ought to at least learn how to play it the same way the Rethugs do.
p.lukasiak
I think you’re right…. the Dem ad is highly effective, but doesn’t contain the “outrage” factor necessary for free air time. All the Dems needed to do was include a line “Does President Bush think he can get away with LYING to the American people again” and it would have gotten “free air”. But just showing Bush lying doesn’t cut it — you have to call him a liar to get the needed “controversy” factor…..
Pb
That’s about the size of it. Also, check out the “I Drew This” cartoon that John Cole embedded earlier.
Zifnab
I never understood why the Dems have been so perpetually reluctant to call a duck a duck. The Republicans are (in every sense of it) horrible liars. They lie early, they lie often, and they don’t even stick very hard to a veneer of truth. Republican lies are almost laughably easy to debunk. And yet as often as not Swiftboaters and Parkinsans deniers and War Apologists and Social Security Slayers never get labeled as “liars”, merely as “people with a different point of view.”
The Other Steve
A salient point. One of the problems the Democrats have is when presented with such an opportunity by the Republicans they embrace it and help out the GOP.
Look, if the Republicans run an ad calling your guy a toothless coward, you don’t respond by saying “I’m outraged! How dare they! Take that back, you meanies!”, and then hold a protest at the local Donutland.
You respond by saying “This is just another example of how the Republicans lack any positive ideas, that they have to resort to these childish antics.” End of story, move on.
One shows strength, the other reinforces the talking point. Guess which is which.
The Other Steve
Because they are too nice, and don’t understand politics is blood sport.
Why else do you think the Republicans accuse the Dems of being mean haters? It’s not because they are, it’s because they want the Dems to respond by being more nice.
Jay C
OK: first let me air one disagreement with you, John: I take issue with your characterization of Rush Limbaugh as “…a dimwitted sack of horse dung…”. I think that is being much too kind to him.
However, I have an awful feeling that the (perfectly justified) outrage at Rush’s disgraceful sliming of Michael J. Fox is probably going to be spun away into the ether by the Right-wing Noise machine; since Fox made a major mistake by authorizing his endorsement for a political campaign; thus, to the ethics-free vermin who run most Republican campaigns, making himself a legitimate target.
I feel that if Michael J. Fox had appeared in a “generic” support-stem-cell-research-to-cure-Parkinson’s commercial; and been dumped on by Fat Rush as he was, there would have been mobs gathering outside Limbaugh’s studio with torches and pitchforks. However, once Fox’s endorsement was utilized as a campaign pitch for a specific candidate/party, it seems to have perceived, by the Sleaze Merchants who run political campaigns these days, as fair game: illness or no.
It’s pretty useless, IMO, to decry this sort of thing: as long as it succeeds, or appears to succeed, we will be stuck with it. The only “cure” is the failure of negative campaigns: and hopefully, Sen. McCaskill will be able to hold herself up as an example, come January.
Mr Furious
The only thing “newsworthy” about the DNC ad is that it’s pretty good. The media is not going to pick up the “why haven’t they been doing this for four years” meme and run with it for a bunch of free coverage. Media Matters should stop complaining in advance about things that are not worthy.
Being strong, and clear is effective, but it doesn’t cross the line into controversial on it’s own, and in any case, it takes a response of outrage from the other side to generate the coverage they’re bitching about. This ad ain’t going to do it.
Mr Furious
The apt baseball analogy is that Rush Limbaugh is the pitcher who botches the routine play and throws the ball down the third base line allowing the Dems to circle the bases…
Mr Furious
It’s also worth pointing out that credit for the most perfectly played ad of the last several elections comes not from any DNC shop or mind, but from Michael J. Fox himself. He produced the ad himself and offered it to McCaskill and others. McCaskill deserves a modicum of credit for not chickening out and shying away from the ad, but the real credit goes to Fox.
If Fox didn’t step up on this issue, the Republican’s ad would still be the topic, and Bush might actually get traction with his bullshit rhetoric-shift.
THAT is the depressing part. First thing the Dems have done right in I don’t know how long, and they didn’t even do it.
MNPundit
Gotta say bingo on this one. It became a big deal because people made a big deal out of it. Although I think the RNC ad backfired because it looked more like an Al-Qaeda training video than anything else.
To me anyhow that ad was a pathetic attempt.