On the calendar as I write, the actual holiday is more than three weeks away, but I am motivated to give thanks now. Since I have many things to be thankful for everyday, I really should not allow them to pile up, right? So, as I open up my gratitude journal to a fresh page, click my pen… for what shall I give thanks first?
NO MORE ATTACK ADS! I give thanks because I don’t have to watch any more political attack ads.
Many of the campaign commercials against Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney struck me as particularly damaging. One included the hidden camera clip of him speaking disparagingly about 47% of the population. Another portrayed a heartbreaking story about workers who lost their jobs at a plant that was closed by Bain Capital and Mitt Romney, who reaped many millions of dollars on the backs of the workers they fired. The worst part is that I never saw Romney defend himself. Both candidates responded to some of their opponents’ claims, not all.
In Virginia, an ad supporting Tim Kaine in his bid for a seat in the U.S. Senate, features a middle-aged woman whose voice conveys a seething bitterness against George Allen as she delivers, with aghast and disgust, the line that almost made me want to despise all conservatives forever: “How dare they…?”
I do not know if the woman is an actress or a citizen. Before mentioning any names, she seems personally hurt by someone, as if the wind was just knocked out of her; so much that she could barely produce enough sound for her words to be understood. Any woman with life experience would relate to her as she made her appeal, almost guaranteeing viewers would side with her against the object of her anger, no matter who it was. But, I am not a voter in Virginia!
Now, the ad is gone. Of all the attack ads, this is the one I am most happy not to see again.
Unfortunately, attack ads continue year around. Even as I was preparing to vote, I heard the familiar “Carol of the Bells” in the background advertising a cereal that can be served as a holiday party snack. Not much more time will pass before another intensely passionate woman appears in her red track suit as she begins her annual training regimen for Black Friday.
… a different kind of attack ad and your wallet is the “Target”.
Life is tough! Right? Write! 