Barbara Lippert's Critique

They appear to take up the same time and space as regular TV commercials, but these grim, repetitive or flat-out ridiculous messages bear little resemblance to advertising as we know it. Judging from a sampling of midterm-election spots, they are the rude extrusions of political consultants, the visual and aural equivalent of Spam (in both the "spiced ham" and the Web sense). The stuff looks so bad it seems churned out by recruits hoping to get the hang of Photoshop one of these days. Chopped, sliced or smeared, these "spots" all favor the same static visuals: bullet points and headlines ripped from newspapers, and pictures of the opponent at his or her most butt-ugly and embarrassing (and that announcer who sounds so ominous must be working overtime). It's not news that negative ads make an already cynical electorate tune out even more. It becomes a formula for 5-year-olds: "I wasn't going to do it, but he started it!" "No, he did it first!" One candidate charges that the other's ad "smacks of desperation," and the other replies that the record (from 1977, perhaps) must be aired. It easily backfires, or ends up as a scorched-earth tactic. As one consultant told me, "In some instances you're hoping for low turnout—you don't want the other side energized." But is this anything new? Attack ads have been around since before LBJ devastated Goldwater with "Daisy," the granddaddy of all negative ads, in the 1964 presidential election. What's more, midterm-election ads were never very exciting. They never generated a "Morning in America" or a "Daisy." By those standards, is this election any worse than usual?Yes, because these ads, easily the most vicious and negative in history, come at a time of unparalleled anxiety. Voters are faced with worries that would have seemed insane just a few years ago: snipers, deadly gas in Russia, North Korean nukes, smallpox, corporate corruption, 401(k)s evaporating into 101(k)s. Then there's the ongoing reality of terrorism and looming war, and that makes politicizing these world issues for local gain that much more toxic.Take the Saddam brigade—please. As beneath contempt as it sounds, the image of the smiling Iraqi leader (or perhaps one of his clones) appears in spots for at least three candidates. I know that when I see pictures of Hussein and Osama bin Laden, I think, "The great state of Georgia!" In the most egregious example of Hussein-icide, Republican Senate candidate Rep. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia ran an ad against Democratic incumbent Sen. Max Cleland that began with shots of the Mideastern rat pack and went on to claim that Cleland is "weak and misleading" on homeland security, questioning his "courage to lead." (Cleland, incidentally, is a Vietnam vet who lost his legs and an arm in the war, while Chambliss never served, allegedly due to bad knees.) The ad, not surprisingly, was re worked after one week.In South Dakota, an ad for Repub lican Senate candidate Rep. John Thune uses almost the same schtick: Over a picture of Hussein, the voice over says, "Al Qaeda terrorists ... enemies of America." It goes on to attack his opponent, Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, for voting "against a missile-defense system 29 times." Both men voted for the Iraq resolution, and Johnson has a son now serving in the Army in Afghanistan. For Dr. Marilyn O'Grady, running for a House seat from Long Island, N.Y., the enemy might be Al Qaeda and Saddam might be a brutal thug, but a bigger threat is Barbra Streisand. In easily the most gratuitous use of a diva—and in a commercial so bad that it falls into the hilarious camp tradition of the old National Enquirer talking heads—O'Grady attacks Democratic Rep. Carolyn McCarthy because McCarthy got a "fat" $1,000 check from "Baghdad Babs" in 1998 and now is "silent as her liberal pal bashes our president." At least it's lively. But the way the spot is set up, it looks as though Babs is running against Saddam. (And we know he's already gotten 98 percent of the vote.) Will campaign finance reform, going into effect the first of the year, mean we'll return to humanity—or at least sober up? Nah, it means the campaign to overturn the bill will begin Jan. 2, opening the door to more ads bearing Saddam's pic and excoriating the measure for being anti-American and anti-war.

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Barbara Lippert's Critique

Barbara Lippert

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Barbara Lippert