Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

THE MOVEON.ORG ANTI-BUSH ADS ARE FINALLY OUT, and they're actually pretty good. Some of them are downright great. I particularly like "Child's Pay", which is as good as any professionally produced ad for a real product I've ever seen. (As good even as the Miller Lite "Catfight" ads? I'm afraid so.)

What I find remarkable is this: as far as I know, the people who produced these ads were operating with very limited budgets and resources, less probably than even the most shoe-string long-shot moonbat candidate has at his disposal (we all know who I'm talking about, Dennis K.). But even the worst of these ads was at or above the quality of the average real-world political ad. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on presidential campaigns, but most of the TV ads they run are only a little better than those self-produced ads for local furniture companies. You know, the ones with the overweight Italian-American gentleman and his family talking about how now is a great time to buy a new loveseat...

At least local discount furniture warehouses can make the excuse that their product is just dull, and that there's no way to make a non-hokey commercial about the great deal they're offering on a slightly damaged pull-out sofa. But politics isn't dull, and the MoveOn people have demonstrated (albeit not without some ads that misfire) that political ads can be interesting. I actually don't think I'd mind a particularly nasty Dean-Bush election, full of unfair accusations and vicious televised smears, if only those ads would be interesting. If I could feel about political ads the way I feel about beer ads, or ads for that new NFL network (God, love that Rich Eisen), and horrible mud-slinging was the price, well then sling that mud, God-damnit!