What's wrong with that image? So someone gets more creative and artistic with their vote against Bush campaign? It's obviously not literal, nor was it meant for anyone to take it as literal. It does call Bush a monster(in a humerously, and puposefully exaggerated manner), and insinuates that folks can stop the monster by voting against him. That add shouldn't be offensive to anyone. I'm not saying the ad is art, but it is more artistic than the normal political ad. If folks can't understand that, then perhaps the NEA should have its funding increased and folks should learn more about artistic expression.
not commenting on it's artistic value, just saying it's an extremely graphic example of the depth of bush-hatred on the left. a level of hatred for a sitting president that is unparralelled in this country's history, IMO, much more profound than the right's hatred of clinton. clinton hatred was based primarily in frustration w/ clinton's political skill. i don't recall ever seeing clinton compared to stalin, hitler, or mussollini.
Please... the level of disgust with Bush is primarily based on policy with a generous helping of incompetence. With Clinton, it was much more personal. (And by the way, Bush has a web ad on Kerry that features Hitler.) Then there are these, found in a few seconds via Google... http://www.roadtowealth.com/demagogue.htm http://www.freeworldalliance.com/newsflash/pre_2002/newsflash183.htm http://autarchic.tripod.com/files/biglies.html http://www.lyinginponds.com/boxscore.20040308.html http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/email/box048/msg04890.htm http://www.yauponcreek.org/GunControl/Learning.html
I saw the ad as saying the things that our being to our country by this President are monstrous. I think I have a hatred of this administration on a level I've never had before. I think a lot of people do. I'm not commenting about this ad about my feelings on this administration. I know you don't share those, but I will and explain my feeling, and add that I don't think I'm alone in feeling this way. I love democracy. I love the United States, and especially the ideas this country has expressed and in large part clung to for most of its existence. I certainly don't deny the warts, splotches and imperfections the country has gone through and continues to go through. As much as I might complain about those things with past presidents, there was still a basic adherance to our nations ideals and values. There was an idea that war and violence was only to be used a last resort. We frowned or even intervened at the unnecessary use of military force. Democracy was an idea to be spread by exemplifying our freedom, charity, goodwill, and guidance by example. We stood against torture and abuse of power(at least overtly). Those are things I believed in that our current president doesn't hold to. Our president ignored solutions that might have given us the truth regarding Iraq's WMD capability. Whether or not he is directly responsible for the torture, his justice department was writing memos excusing it, the administration has been claiming that the Geneva convention doesn't apply, and people in this country have bought into the excuse that 'They(the terrorists) do it we should be able to do it too.' That isnt' America. That is not leading by example, and it's the rationale of a 3rd grader. Our president has dismissed scientists when there scientific findings didn't produce the results he wanted. He's fought the courts to be able to hold American citizens without granting them their rights. He's held back information from congress, he's allowed a person with top security clearance to continue in his position with the same clearance and position despite that person having committed a felony, and exposing an officer of our intel community while we are engaged in a war on terror. That is dangerous, and puts personal ambition and cronies above the security of our nation. The president has been secretive, skirted the checks and balances written into our constitution and portrays our nation in a shameful, and dishonorable manner. I want a president that at least holds true to the constitution, and exemplifies those ideals. Even if I could dismiss all the above and like the idea of the war in Iraq, I still wouldn't want this president running it. He's botched it at every step of the way. The torture happened under his watch, he didn't finish the job in Afghanistan, he allowed looting, and sacking of hospitals, he hasn't been able to secure Iraq, he's made 'mistake' after 'mistake' in gathering intel, running the occupation of Iraq, dealing with our allies in the situation. He's botched it horribly. That kind of incompetance can not be allowed to coninute while we have combat troops on the front lines of battle. Watching ideals that are American, that I love, being trounced by this administration is painful, and it's happening in a way that it's never happened in my lifetime. To see the leader and representation of our country defile these values, and ideals, I hate this administration, and think it is eating away at the very fiber of what our nation is and has been based on. This ad while intentionally over the top, captures that feeling. I know you disagree as do many others, and I don't have a problem with that. But I don't think there is anything wrong with expressing our frustration in a political ad. If it's more over the top than before, it's only fitting for this administration.
Interesting Sites Rimrocker....the last one was pretty scary: http://www.yauponcreek.org/GunControl/Learning.html Makes me feel guilty for owning firearms--sure hope you don't fall in line with these nut-jobs ROXRAN...
nice try, but the ad in question just shows the moveon ad that featured bush as hitler...it's not comparing kerry to hitler, but rather comparing kerry to the coalition of the wildeyed that compares bush to hitler. rather nuanced, i know...
rim, there's a world of difference between nut-job websites and your party's former presidential candidate. show me an example where bob dole, or a comparable republican public figure, compared clinton to a nazi or fascist and i'll concede the point. the nation is a main stream, albeit quite leftist, publication, comparable to the weekly standard or NR. certainly the latter two were extremely critical of both clintons, but they didn't use that kind of imagery. no, the attacks on bush are unprecedented in kind, if not in scope.
Mmmm. Take a look at it... http://www.georgewbush.com/VideoAndAudio/Default.aspx And know that just about everyone who has seen it disagrees with you. Take a look at what Will wrote... http://slate.msn.com/id/2103033/
So now we're moving from the general to the very specific... if you had been so exact in your original post, we could have saved brain cells. (Incidentally, one of the eamples was referencing Cal Thomas, a guy who has his own show on Fox.) I think this has come up before and there's at least one campaign rally where a speaker before Dole makes the Hitler comparison (to the delight of the crowd) and Dole says nothing. Perhaps someone can search for the thread.
Wow. Who is thinking for you? There is no way to look at that ad - and the way the images are juxtaposed - and not conclude that it groups Kerry, Dean, Gore with Hitler. The actual text reads "Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party" and includes Hitler among the rest. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt and imagining you hadn't seen the ad or Will's article. I'm truly blown away you have seen both and still stick to your guns. Here's Will's article for those who want to see just how well basso can wiggle: http://slate.msn.com/id/2103033/ Der Furor Bush plays the Nazi card. By William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg Posted Monday, June 28, 2004, at 4:13 PM PT From: William Saletan To: Jacob Weisberg Where to begin with this despicable video? Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it. The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it. The Bush video's opening white-on-black graphic says, "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party. The Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Next comes a parade of angry speakers: Al Gore, Hitler, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt, Hitler, Gore, and Kerry. Is Bush suggesting that Hitler fits in with this group? Don't be silly, Jake. Bush's aides insist they're just showing the Hitler footage so you can see the filth Democrats are putting out. But we already know how Bush's GOP presents images from Democratic ads when it wants to discredit them. In 2000, Republican National Committee ads repeatedly depicted Al Gore's commercials running on a small television screen in a kitchen. The RNC ads didn't show the Gore ads at full size on your screen because the RNC didn't want the images in the Gore ads to be taken at face value. This time, the Bush campaign shows the Hitler images at full size, in an unexplained sequence with Gore, Dean, Gephardt, and Kerry. Draw your own conclusions. How does the Bush camp identify the Hitler footage? "Sponsored by Moveon.Org" says a label on the first Hitler clip, evidently put there by the miscreants who submitted the ad. "Images from Moveon.Org ad" says the Bush campaign's label on the second Hitler clip. The only organization that doesn't identify the clips as a "Moveon.org ad" is MoveOn.org, which denounced the ad and never "sponsored" it. But never mind. Instead of apologizing for this implicit misrepresentation of sponsorship, the Bush campaign has made the misrepresentation explicit. "The following video contains remarks made by and images from ads sponsored by Kerry Supporters," says a graphic appended to the beginning of the video. The Bush campaign's claim that the amateur Hitler ads represent "John Kerry's Democratic Party" is laughable. Kerry didn't control MoveOn.org, and MoveOn.org didn't make the ads. When the ads were submitted, the membership of MoveOn.org largely supported Dean, the candidate who had nearly wiped Kerry off the map. Kerry had just mortgaged his house to get the cash Democrats were refusing to give him. The suggestion that he controlled the party is preposterous—but only slightly more preposterous than the suggestion that Kerry is responsible what Dean and Gephardt said while running against him, or what Gore and Moore said while supporting candidates who were running against him. Not to mention that the question Gore poses in the ad—"How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam Hussein's torture prison?"—is well warranted. The only clip that can fairly be attributed to Kerry appears at the end, when the senator is shown telling an audience, "George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your (bleep) and tell you there is no Promised Land." This is the punch line of a joke Kerry used to tell on the trail. The joke, now thankfully defunct, is too long and unfunny to bear repeating. What's worth noting is that Bush-Cheney '04 thinks this clip shows a man too angry and foul-mouthed to sit in the White House. This from a president who delivered the seven-letter version of Kerry's A-word in his last campaign, and a vice president who boasted Friday that he "felt better" after delivering the F-word to a Democrat on the Senate floor. Politician, go heal thyself. To: William Saletan From: Jacob Weisberg On the pretext of protesting a comparison of George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler, the president's re-election campaign has made an ad that implicitly compares John Kerry to Hitler. To be sure, it's disgusting, for all the reasons you say. But the vileness of "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed" must not be allowed to obscure its essential hilarity. What moron came up with this idea? What are they smoking in Karl Rove's office? C'mon, Will. This ad is the campaign equivalent of The Producers—an idea so egregiously tasteless and stupid that it might just succeed as camp. Footage of Hitler shouting in German is juxtaposed with footage of Al Gore, Howard Dean, and Dick Gephardt getting worked up while criticizing Bush, Michael Moore getting booed for criticizing the Iraq War at the Academy Awards, and John Kerry using the phrase "kick your ass" (which is bleeped out, possibly in an effort to imply he said something worse). I know I should be disgusted by the attempted association of Democrats and Nazis, but it's too funny to get upset about. Cue the goose-stepping mädchen of the Brookings Institution! What exactly does the Bush-Cheney campaign think that these Democrats have in common with Hitler? Basically, it's that they're too darned excited about politics. They yell. They criticize harshly. They use bad language. The message here, to the extent there is one, is: "Don't be like Hitler—chill out!" Developing its argument that Nazism was basically a failure to relax, the ad attempts to tie its grotesque libel to the Bush campaign's theme of the month, which is that the incumbent's "optimism" is better than Kerry's "pessimism." "This is not a time for pessimism and rage," the screen text says, over an image of a not at all enraged John Kerry telling his camel joke. The noise and chaos and grainy footage of the Democrats jarringly dissolves into sunny music, accompanied by a clear, color photograph of a confident President Bush strutting around the White House. "It's a time for optimism, steady leadership and progress," the text continues. This language pushes the facile notion that "optimism" is the most important of presidential qualities deep into the realm of the absurd. The implicit argument is a parody of syllogistic illogic: According to the premise of the ad, Hitler = rage and pessimism; Democrats = rage and pessimism; ergo, Kerry = Hitler. Is there any danger of any person in the United States taking this stuff seriously? Then again, if such a grotesque video is not an occasion for pessimism and rage, I'm not sure what is. In the president's view, is there ever "a time" for such sentiments? Would Bush have counseled optimism if he'd been a Jew facing the real Hitler in Germany in the 1930s, or a Kurd in Saddam's Iraq? Should the kidnapped U.S. Marine threatened with beheading by his captors be optimistic because optimism is the American way? A state of perpetual optimism is either a dangerous delusion or a calculated pose. In the case of the Bush campaign, it's evidently the latter. Comparing one's opponent to Hitler is not, in fact, the sign of a confident or optimistic candidate. To the contrary, it's the act of a fearful and cynical candidate who is willing to use any tactic to avoid defeat. But in reaching so far down so early in, Bush has not improved his prospects. Aimed as it is at the surviving members of various John Birch splinter organizations, this ad will win over no one, while alienating and offending many potential Bush supporters. Republicans will spend much time on the defensive trying to explain why their ad is not as revolting and preposterous as it obviously is. This sets Bush back. He's going to need better gutter tactics than this to stop Hitler in Ohio.
You mean the ad that was removed from moveon.org and denounced once the content was reviewed. That's right, you don't need any stinking facts to help you make up your mind.
and what did gore say just the other day about "digital brownshirts?" and moveon's defense is laughable. they only removed the ad because conservatives called them on it- not because they fely any reticence about depicting bush as hitler. i should've prefaced my earlier post by saying i don't like the ad. however, there's a huge difference between showing gore, dean, and hitler as "wildeyed" and acusing bush of using gestapo tacticts.
Batman, that's just like the administration professing outrage at Kerry using the F word in an interview, then turning around and using it on the Senate floor. If it wasn't so sad, it'd be funny.
1. I didn't think the bush campaign ad was all that bad in the context of disgusting "associative"attack ads; It wasn't Max Cleland/Saddam/Osama level, though it was in the same territory. It was not as bad as I had expected however. 2. Please elaborate on the grounds of this "huge difference", I'd like to see you build up this artificial distinction. (BTW, your history is a little funky, IIRC, the brownshirts pre-dated the establishment of the Gestapo, I believe, so "gestapo tactics" is not an accurate characterization) 3. Since Brownshirts is off the table, is the following materials fair game for an anti-Bush ad? (and would this ad be "huge(ly) different) a. an article in a conservative online mag/blog about feminists entitled "The Brownshirts of our Time" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10882 b. an article about the NEA (the educational one) called "Brownshirts in the Classroom" http://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/features/cm03_brown.html 4. What other metaphors are permissible? "Bush Campaign plans campaign ad blitzkrieg in coming months" "Karl Rove brilliantly outflanks his opponents with Rommel-esque political manuevering" "Karl Rove brilliantly outflanks his opponents with Stonewall Jackson-esque political manuevering" "Republican party purges disloyal operatives" "Hastert, DeLay exile McCain to political gulag" I eagerly await the construction of this intellectual house of cards in order to show me the "huge" difference between the two.
the distinction, which you continue to ignore, is that leaders of the democratic party are themselves making the nazi comparisons. any such language from the right comes not from BC and Co., but from weblogs, magazines, etc, even then, nazi/fascists language isn't used by mainstream sources. unless you count cheney's endschuldigenf!cking sie...
google me this batman, sam, where has Reagan, Bush pere, Quayle, Dole, Kemp, Shrub, or Cheney referred to Carter, Mondale, Ferraro, Dukakis, Bentsen, Clinton, Gore, or Kerry has a Nazi, Fascist, or Brownshirt, either while in office or after leaving?
