It's fierce and very close, so now the money talks - and it talks dirty
THE most expensive US congressional election in history has almost certainly become the nastiest as a dark tide of attack advertisements sweeps across American TV screens.With control of the House of Representatives and the Senate hanging in the balance, rival candidates are plumbing new depths of taste and duplicity in their desperate quest for votes.
“Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men,” says an advert paid for by Vernon Robinson, Mr Miller’s Republican opponent for a North Carolina district. These advertisements also allege that Mr Miller failed to support the purchase of better body armour for soldiers in Iraq, saying that he “votes for sex but not for our troops”.
Mr Miller was in Iraq at the time of that body armour vote, while his interest in elderly men masturbating appears limited to his opposition to a Bill scrapping federal grants for sexual studies. [Remind me again why I never want to run for U.S. Senate... Good Lord. Why do candidates put themselves through this crap?]
In Tennessee this week the Republicans broadcast an advert showing an attractive, bare-shouldered blonde saying that she had met Harold Ford Jr, the Democrat senatorial candidate, at a Playboy party. It concludes with her winking into the camera and whispering: “Harold, call me.” [Shame... Shame on the people behind that ad]
Mr Ford, who is trying to become the first black senator for the South since the American Civil War [The South just doesn't change at the speed of light], was one of 3,000 guests at a Playboy party for the Super Bowl last year. Black groups have complained that the advert, which has now been withdrawn by the Republicans, was playing up to the residual sensitivity of southern voters towards inter-racial dating and possibly a stereotype of African- American males.
read more...
- October 27, 2006
This item is closed, it's not possible to add new comments to it or to vote on it
Click here to manage subscription