Tag: Media

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Many Americans have heard of the Daisy Ad.



Most politics buffs probably watched this ad at one time or another. And after it was over, they may have wondered – how in the world was the daisy ad so effective?

By modern standards, it seems both outdated and completely transparent. The implication is most unsubtle: voting for Senator Barry Goldwater will bring nuclear war. Today’s viewer might find it somewhat ridiculous, even laughable. It would be as if Senator Barack Obama cut an ad implying that Senator John McCain would start World War Three.

Yet the Daisy Ad worked. Mr. Goldwater went on to lose the election by a landslide, partly as a result of said ad.

This was because in 1964, believe it or not, many Americans actually worried that Mr. Goldwater might use nuclear weapons.

More below.

Several events contributed to this perception. Firstly, Senator Goldwater publicly “proposed that NATO field commanders be able to initiate nuclear strikes in Europe without explicit permission from the White House.” This caused considerable controversy; most Americans criticized the proposal – rightly – as incredibly reckless, something that left humanity’s fate in the hands of one short-sighted general.

Mr. Goldwater also had a reputation for making careless statements – much like a modern-day Vice President Joe Biden, except far worse. Not all of these involved nuclear weapons (for example, the senator publicly supported shutting down the Tennessee Valley Authority, which was why he lost the state of Tennessee), but several unfortunately did. In one such instance, the candidate mused, “Let’s lob one (nuclear weapon) into the men’s room of the Kremlin.” In another, reporter Howard S. Smith asked about disrupting supply lines in Vietnam. Mr. Goldwater answered,

…There have been several suggestions made. I don’t think we would use any of them. But defoliation of the forests by low-yield atomic weapons could well be done. When you remove the foliage, you remove the cover…”

Even with the qualification, it is still disconcerting to hear Mr. Goldwater immediately suggest using nuclear weapons. Most Americans, however, heard something far worse: Republican candidate Barry Goldwater wanted to nuke Vietnam. The media generally left out the part where Goldwater said, “I don’t think we would use any of them.”

Mr. Goldwater did not do himself any favors in pointing out this fact. His clarification went:

I would never use a nuclear weapon when a conventional weapon would do. I would leave it up to the commanders.

Since this opened gigantic loopholes (if conventional weapons wouldn’t do, for instance), Mr. Goldwater still appeared quite reckless.

All these missteps gradually cemented a very negative perception: Barry Goldwater was a hawkish extremist, irresponsible and unfit to wield the presidency’s vast powers. “In your gut, you know he’s nuts,” went the Democratic refrain, and the majority of voters came to believe this statement.

The Daisy ad focused on this perception and shifted the national conversation to Goldwater’s recklessness. It worked not because it persuaded Americans that Senator Barry Goldwater would start nuclear war (not even the most effective negative ad can do that), but because it reminded them that he just might do so.

Democrat Becky Greenwald has been low on cash the last few weeks, but her campaign bought 60 seconds of air time on the CBS and NBC affiliates in Des Moines and Mason City immediately before Barack Obama’s prime-time special on October 29.

Greenwald’s ad was outstanding and could not have been more clear about the contrast between her and incumbent Tom Latham. Click the link to watch the commercial, which made clear that Latham is a Republican who’s voted with George Bush 94 percent of the time–even more often than John McCain. Meanwhile, the ad made clear visually and in the voice-over that Becky Greenwald is a Democrat who will support Barack Obama’s policies.  

I hope they will be able to air this commercial during the final days of the campaign. Please donate to Greenwald’s campaign if you can afford to, so that more viewers will be exposed to this message. It’s much stronger than the biographical ad Greenwald was running in late September, which didn’t make much of a case against Latham.

In response to the Research 2000 poll showing a tight race in IA-04, Latham’s campaign released partial results from an internal poll showing him ahead by 22 points.

Latham’s early tv spots were positive about his record (while avoiding the Republican label). In October he started running negative ads on the bailout in heavy rotation.

We’ll find out next Tuesday if Obama’s coat-tails are enough to overcome Latham’s big edge in paid media. It’s a D+0 district where Democrats have made huge gains in voter registration in the past two years.

In related news, Time magazine says IA-04 is a “race to watch.” The political director of EMILY’s List says he is “cautiously optimistic” about Greenwald’s chances and falsely claims that EMILY’s List “came on board” for her soon after meeting with her this summer. In fact, EMILY’s List didn’t endorse Greenwald until September 16. The group has been communicating with Greenwald’s campaign but hasn’t run any ads in Iowa’s fourth district.

The Des Moines Register endorsed Greenwald today, while the Mason City Globe-Gazette endorsed Latham over the weekend.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the United Auto Workers PAC has been running a radio ad criticizing Latham for voting for tax breaks for corporations and against equal pay for women. The ad also says we need Becky Greenwald in Congress.  

This is off-topic from down-ballot races, but I felt compelled to post; the Democratic presidential primary debate in Philadelphia was an embarrassment. Not to our party, mind you, nor to either of our candidates. Rather, it was an embarrassment for the media, and for the entire profession of journalism. The economy is tanking. The war in Iraq continues on as an endless, unmitigated disaster. Next to no one can afford health care. Yet, what questions did these oh-so-esteemed debate moderators throw at Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama? Questions fed to them by the likes of Sean Hannity about Obama's acquaintanceship with a former 60's radical, who is neither a campaign advisor nor a close friend of the senator's.  Questions about whether Clinton believes Obama can win. Questions about Obama's reluctance to wear a flag pin. A flag pin?!?!?!?!  The Bush administration has our country on the ropes and all these media bobbleheads can talk about is a flag pin!?!?!?!?  It's no wonder winning is such an uphill battle for our party; with such idiocy so rampant, I'm amazed that even half the country votes our way!

All the more reason for us to press onward and win these down-ballot seats, where the media spotlight doesn't linger long enough to turn the proceedings into a complete circus.  Progressivism truly has to start from the ground up; in this info-tainment age, it's the only chance we've got!

On the Sunday after the midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, viewers tuned in to NBC’s Meet the Press to hear what the Democratic win meant for the country — only to discover that host Tim Russert did not have any Democrats on at all. Instead, Russert’s guests were Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT), who ran in the general election as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary. And after an election in which the public’s opposition to the Iraq war was a central issue, Meet the Press hosted two guests who support the war.

http://www.SundayShowReport.com

But that incident is hardly an aberration. In a new report by Media Matters for America — If It’s Sunday, It’s Still Conservative: How the Right Continues to Dominate the Sunday Talk Shows, we show that the Sunday shows — Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday — have consistently given Republicans and conservatives an edge over their Democratic and progressive counterparts in the last two years, the period of the 109th Congress. And, as our analysis shows, the recent shift in power in Washington has yielded mixed results, at best.

OUR KEY FINDINGS:

Despite previous network claims that a conservative advantage existed on the Sunday shows simply because Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, only one show, ABC’s This Week, has been roughly balanced between both sides overall since the congressional majority switched hands in the 2006 midterm elections.

Since the 2006 midterm elections, NBC’s Meet the Press and CBS’ Face the Nation have provided less balance between Republican and Democratic officials than Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox New Sunday despite the fact that Fox News Sunday remains the most unbalanced broadcast overall both before and after the election.

During the 109th Congress (2005 and 2006), Republicans and conservatives held the advantage on every show, in every category measured. All four shows interviewed more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives overall, interviewed more Republican elected and administration officials than Democratic officials, hosted more conservative journalists than progressive journalists, held more panels that tilted right than tilted left, and gave more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives.

Now that Congress has switched hands, one would reasonably expect Democrats and progressives to be represented at least as often as Republicans and conservatives on the Sunday shows. Yet our findings for the months since the midterm elections show that the networks have barely changed their practices. Only one show – ABC’s This Week – has shown significant improvement, having as many Democrats and progressives as Republicans and conservatives on since the election. On the other three programs, Republicans and conservatives continue to get more airtime and exposure.

In the months ahead, will the networks address the imbalance in their guest lineups? Or will they continue with business as usual?

We urge you to read the report and take action.  Tell the networks to address our findings and consider whether the Sunday shows serve the public interest by continuing to give conservatives the edge in setting the terms of the national debate.

Yesterday, I posted a diary asking help in formulating a response to an editorial printed in my local newspaper that slanders those who oppose Bush’s escalation.

I have written a draft of a response (quoted over the flip).  There were many things I wanted to talk about such as the fact the all three Iraq war veterans in Congress voted for the resolution, how the Iraq War took time, effort, troops, materiale, and attention away from the hunt for Osama, and so on.  However, I decided to keep in short (158 words) and focus only on the question of supporting the troops, hoping it will increase the chances of getting printed.

This letter is in response to Monday’s editorial by Cal Thomas, an article full of untruths, faulty logic, and distortion.  What I really want to address is Thomas’ main argument that those who oppose Bush’s plan to escalate the Iraq War by sending 20,000 more troops into Iraq do not support the troops.  In fact, quite the opposite is true.  The greatest test of one’s support for the troops is not how fervently one waves the flag or how quickly one gets behind whatever plan the President has, it’s making sure that troops are asked to risk and give their lives only when absolutely necessary and only when some good will come of it. 

So, those of us who oppose escalation support our troops by demanding that they not be sent into the crossfire of a civil war, knowing that past troop increases have not helped and that the President has no clear definition of what constitutes victory.

I have noticed recently that my local newspaper, The Daily Tribune-News (Cartersville, Georgia) runs only editorials from right-wing talking heads like Mike Reagan, a former chair of the county Republican Party, and the like.  A couple years ago, there was balance.  The chair of the county Democratic Party, Howard Dean, and a local Democratic activist all had columns at one time.  Now, that’s changed.

But I digress.  The object of this diary is not to complain about the right-wing slant of my local paper.  It’s to ask help in formulating a response to one column published recently.

More over the flip.

In this column (linked and quoted), one wingnut spouts out the typical Democrats undermine troop morale bullshit:

http://www.daily-tri…

Before political correctness, a person who gave someone a gift and later took it back was called an “Indian giver.”

This is what a majority in the House did last week when they “gave” their support to American forces fighting to stabilize Iraq and defeat our enemy and then promptly took it back. How else should one interpret this “nonbinding” resolution when part one said, “Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq,” but part two negates part one: “Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”

This is like sending your love a valentine last week and this week sending a note withdrawing the sentiment.

Last Saturday, Republicans managed to block a similar effort in the Senate, but by only four votes. Senate Democrats — and a few like-minded Republicans — vowed to try again.

Once, most members of Congress supported the president’s prosecution of the war. That was when his approval numbers were sky-high. Now that those numbers have fallen, so has congressional support. Most Democrats claim, falsely, that the November election was a referendum on the war. If the president’s policy succeeds, though, two things will happen. First, some members who opposed him will claim they were behind the troop surge all along. Second, most Democrats will assert that success is actually failure because they can’t afford politically to admit they were wrong.

Do the troops feel supported by this House resolution? There are no opinion polls of military and civilian workers in Iraq, but two comments have come to my attention. One is a letter to the editor of The Washington Times from John McFarlane, a military trainer for Northrop-Grumman Technical Services in Elizabethtown, Ky. McFarlane writes that he has just returned from Iraq “after coming out of retirement to go there … I can tell you that the greatest fear of the young service members over there is that the American public will fail to pursue total victory and will leave early, thereby wasting their battle buddies’ life and blood. They feel pain every time somebody pays lip service to his or her conscience with the line: ‘I support the troops, but not the policy.’ (They) know they are the policy and that you should feel shame if you as an American would commit them to anything less than total victory.”

The second letter is from Army Sgt. Daniel Dobson, about whom I wrote in a column last week. Sgt. Dobson says he was in the chow hall in Mosul, watching CNN on the day of the House vote. He writes in an e-mail, “…it made me furious to see congressmen unashamedly proclaim their cowardice, but the reaction of the soldiers tore my heart in two. The faces were that of men that looked as if they were just told there is no United States to go home to. The fury gives way to depression: the thought alone that our elected representatives do not represent us anymore is more than depressing. We see cowardice, sickening spineless cowardice and it makes soldiers sick.”

So much for the assertion by some members of Congress that the House resolution, with the promise of more and binding ones to come, will have no affect on troop morale. How many other soldiers feel this way? How many others might be affected by these “no-confidence” votes? Of equal importance, how emboldened does the enemy feel as he sees the prophecy of Osama bin Laden coming true, that America doesn’t have the stomach or staying power for a long war and will eventually give up if enough death and injury is inflicted upon American troops?

If Congress wants to end this war, it should immediately vote to cutoff funds and receive whatever benefits, or consequences, that result. But too many who lack the spine to win also lack the spine to accept accountability for defeat. The only victory they appear committed to is the next election.

Some points I would like to make:
1. Thomas leaves out that all three Iraq war veterans in Congress are Democrats and all three voted for the resolution.

2. Voting for this resolution does support the troops by saying they should not be thrown into the middle of a civil war.  What is so hard to comprehend about that?

3. He leaves out the fact that most Americans oppose the escalation.

4. His saying the election was not a referendum on the war is bullshit and the exit polls say so.

5. Keeping point four in mind, is he saying that most Americans don’t support the troops and are enabling the terroists.

Please chime in with points, information (citations especially), ways to word things, etc.