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New ‘100 years’ ad
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A matter of life
Yeah, that wasn’t yanked out of context or anything…
I thought Democrats were in favor of “Truth in Advertising.”
My Bad!
How about “Just Win, Baby!”
Beautiful.
for their next ad perhaps they should show McCain in New Orleans vowing that, unlike Bush, he will respond immediately to a disaster than cut to split scenes of Katrina vs McCain and Bush celebrating McCain’s birthday together at the same time as Katrina.
Cameron: Yeah, that wasn’t yanked out of context or anything…
Funny how Republicans never like having their own playbook used against them.
I have never seen anything so disingenuous.
#5: Ah, tu quoque in action!
SteveG,
Um, it’s not as though Jeremiah Wright’s speeches get better in context. If you’ve actually heard McCain’s speech in context, you’ll see why it’s disingenuous. He points out we’ve had troops in several countries for decades after the war(s) in that region are over. He’s certainly not begging for that scenario, but understands it’s realistic if we hope to have something approaching stability over there (notice I didn’t say democracy…)
Cameron: Who said anything about Jeremiah Wright?
Do you remember a fellow named John Kerry? He was widely defamed in a Republican campaign ad that showed him saying, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
The ad was put together in a deliberate attempt to portray him as a fickle “flip-flopper” who changed his mind on a whim.
What it didn’t tell you was that Kerry voted for a version of that bill — co-sponsored it, even — that paid for the $87 billion in expenditures by temporarily rolling back the Bush tax cuts on those making more than $400,000 a year. When that version was defeated and a new version put forward without the means to pay for the cost, Kerry voted against it on grounds of fiscal responsibility.
Now, say what you will about whether or not he should have voted against the second version; the fact remains that it was not just a whimsical change of mind, it was a change of position for a specific, significant reason.
And that is only one example of hundreds of Republican disingenuosness. OF COURSE the McCain “100 years” ad is disinegnuous… but you have absolutely no moral high ground to stand on and complain about it.
TJ: To quoque indeed, and well-placed in this case, no?
Steve, tu quoque (”you also”) is actually the name of a locally fallacy, and one that you committed in post # 5 and once again in # 9. Simply stating that someone has “no moral high ground” because he/she was guilty of something similar in the past is not a good logical argument.
I know what it is TJ, and I know that it is generally considered a fallacy.
On this topic, however, I don’t think it is. People who are quite happy to have political ads that smear Democrats with out-of-context sound bites and misleading information about their records really do have no moral high ground to complain when the Democrats do it to one of theirs.
There’s no logical argument to be made here, so it can’t be a logical fallacy. I’m not trying to argue that the 100 years ad is not misleading. Of course it is. And if the Republicans had a history of being unfailingly fair and scrupulous, that might even be relevant. but they don’t, so it’s not.
Ah, but where did I complain or where was I happy that an ad like that ran about Democrats? Or are you just making sweeping generalizations and assumed I’d think ads like that were appropriate for one side and not the other?
Steve, the issue is the ad itself. The irrelevancy is the issue you have introduced, namely that the Republicans have been guilty of dirty ads in the past. Both parties have been guilty of this, but that is irrelevant when it comes to this particular ad. I am glad that you admit that it is taken out of context (which is Cameron’s point in #1 — she never actually mentioned anything about political parties; perhaps you were conflating comments 1 and 2?).
In fact, both of you actually agree that the ad is a bad one. That should be a cause for celebration, not another excuse to cast political stones.
Well … I suppose I am guilty of overgeneralizing. I didn’t mean to suggest that Cameron specifically would defend one side and attack the other for doing the exact same thing; but many, many people (of any party) do, and I was criticizing that hypocrisy.
So I apologize for the generalization.
However, TJ, if we’re going to be fair in criticizing this ad, then we should also criticize Republican-made ads that commit the same offense, no? Otherwise, we are still being unevenhanded, by criticizing only one side for an offense of which both have been guilty.
STEVEG
Are you STILL mad that you guys got caught cheating in Florida and couldn’t steal another election? (Illinois Presidential 1960, New Jersey Senate 2002)
# 14: SteveG, I agree completely! I would not make a sweeping generalization and say negative ads never have a place in politics (e.g., if Congressman John Smith met with Al-Queda representatives and helped finance pilot training, I would certainly like to know about it!), but both sides should watch such out-of-context misrepresentations, and if they are wrong, they should be called on it. The problem is, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it’s difficult to put it back in. Both sides know this, and that’s why it’s deemed so effective.
The thing that makes this so insulting is that Republicans in NC made a negative ad about Obama that McCain condemned. This looks like nothing more than certainly Dems thinking they have to “get even” for it. Perhaps this would be a good opportunity for Obama (and Clinton too) to step up and, much like McCain, condemn such misrepresentations. If nothing else, it would be good PR for him/them.
BTW, let me apologize for my comments in # 10 if they sounded condescending. You misspelled the term (but, good grief, Latin spelling is not exactly at the top of any of our lists!) and I didn’t get your response at the end of # 9, so I thought you did not understand what I was saying. I generally respect your opinions (even if I do not agree with them) and did not mean to make it sound as if I was speaking down to you.