I will ask once again "Does the Phoenix realize what its readership is and does it realize the moronic shit that it prints on its editorial page"? Case in Point:
Too much damage could be done. America is still a conservative country. As Gary Bauer pointed out about the exit polls, "44 percent of voters identified themselves as 'moderates' and 34 percent identified as 'conservatives.' Just 22 percent called themselves 'liberal.' We've clearly got a lot of work to do, but that's a pretty good foundation for us to build upon!"
That gem is from our friends, Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, who write for the Cagle Cartoon syndicate and appear every week in the Phoenix and I suppose, other Journal Register papers. You may remember them from such cult classics as "Ronald Reagan and the War on Christmas," and the infamous Willie Horton ad that ran against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Now if you add up the numbers 44 (moderates) and 22 (Liberals) you come up with 66 (not conservative). Compare that number with the conservative number and you have a ratio of 2 to 1. How can the article claim that we are a conservative country? The answer is simple. The author is a liar and an idiot. Problem solved?
Write to the editor of the Phoenix and ask them why they include, as a columnist, a writer that is directly responsible for the creation of the most rascist presidential campaign ad in American history. Here is the email link to the editor: Link
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Before we go back to that wonderful year 1988, I would like to say that in hindsight, there are not many people that have analyzed this ad as anything more than race baiting. Roger Stone, a Republican dirty trickster of the best?? or Worst??? kind, has a piece on the PBS series Frontline about this ad. He says he warned the campaign against it because it represented racism and was downright sleazy. BTW, the show is called "Boogie Man" and it is about Lee Atwater and they spend a good deal of time breaking down the strategy behind the ad.
Now, lets get back to 1988. Our first generation of Members Only jackets have just worn out and we were all getting tired of U2's Joshua Tree. Floyd creates the Horton ad (scary black dude, rape women, and Dukakis) to scare people. It is true that the furlough program was a clusterfuck. It is also true that it was created in 1972 by a Republican Governor and modeled after the same program in California set up by then governor . . . wait for it . . . Ronald Reagan. Floyd doesn't tell you that. For full disclosure, it was Al Gore that first brought the furlough issue up in the 88 primary. The "Revolving Door" ad came out shortly after that was a Bush/Quayle ad. That had a wonderful scene of prisoner's walking through a revolving door and only the scary black dude is the one that glances up a the camera. It was race baiting and it was race baiting because the GOP's strategy that year went through the South. They couldn't come close to winning without it. Bush was down by 17 coming out of his own convention. They were hurting.
Were the prison's a mess? I guess I can give you that. Horton's blackness cannot be viewed as irrelevant. The severity of his crimes as compared to a comparable white murderer is really an exercise in racism itself. Horton was scary. Hide the women, Willie is coming. We exploit in politics and that was what was done here. We now frown a bit more on exploitation.
I always thought that a good anti war ad would be showing dead civilians in Iraq or bombed out schools in Afghanistan with little dead kids all over the place. Will such an ad ever be on TV???? I doubt it because it crosses the line between decency and exploitation. Just like Willie Horton did.
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