It’s been a tough run for Senate hopeful Christine O’Donnell, and to round off the week, someone finally put out an ad portraying her as a witch (I suppose this isn’t too surprising). But that’s the price you pay for telling Bill Maher you’ve dabbled in witchcraft.
Let’s not forget about Ladybug Gate, aka the blue balls story heard round the world, aka this week’s biggest non-story (in the sense that this kind of piece isn’t a first for Gawker). Either way, the ad happened, at the behest of The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which went so far as to include “a computer chip that features a cackling witch”.
Let me take a second to say that NPR has been running a train on political ads, finding ways to talk about the upcoming election ads like a passive aggressive coworker trying to get you to come to his potentially lame halloween party. If you’re one of those magical people who manages to keep the fliers from entering your mailbox and never watches TV, this may come as a surprise to you: the ads this year are 3 parts crazy, one part pointless.
Also pointless: holding an opinion on political advertising (well, the direct mail kind anyway), because the consensus, according to NPR, people just don’t like it. But getting printed materials in an undecided voter’s hands is effective, say campaign consultants, even if the only time the voter sees it is as she takes it to the trash. And so it’s with that in mind that a cackling postcard makes sense, if you’re AFSCME, who couldn’t have picked a better time to put their ad out.
Read the full story here.
More: “Christine O’Donnell to Sean Hannity: No More National Media for Me“