Bush's new ad

If you haven't seen the new low in attack ads, go over to Bush's campaign site and check it out. Since my cat, Max Power, is a Republican*, he received an email from the campaign praising the ad today.

Dear Max,

This new video shows something unprecedented in politics - the coalition that John Kerry is building to defeat our President - a Coalition of the Wild-eyed:

www.GeorgeWBush.com

As the video shows, the faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party are ones of pessimism, rage, and baseless attacks.

The choice will be clear in November. This is not a time for pessimism and rage. It's a time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress.

The ad shows a series of liberals or Democrats speaking in angry tones of voices, most notably Al Gore raising his voice in response to the cheering crowd at MoveOn.org. It also shows tiny clips from the two ads that were submitted to MoveOn.org and yanked by the owners that compared Bush to Hitler. The Republicans made a huge stink about those ads, and the lesson was learned--if anyone compares anyone to Hitler, ever, then the tarnishes anyone who ever voted for the same candidate as the person who made the comparison. Which is why it's interesting to me that anyone watching this new ad by the Republicans who is not aware of the controversy over these two quickly-yanked submissions would walk away with this set of images:

Al Gore making a speech
Hitler making a speech
More liberals and Democrats making speeches
Hitler making a speech
Etc.

It must have been inadvertent and just very bad editing, because the juxtaposition does seem to imply that Democrats are Nazis whipping a crowd of fascists into a frenzy. Especially if you just hear the soundtrack, if say, you are one of those people who uses commercial time to get up and get something to drink or eat. Or even if you are one of those people who doesn't pay incredibly detailed attention to commercials so that you can go research every shot of them on the Internet moments after they air.
I explained carefully to my cat that the party that is harboring neo-fascists is certainly not the Democrats. I explained that even though BushCo will excuse itself by saying the images come from submissions to a contest at MoveOn.org, that this still does not make it a part of civilized discourse. Because if the Republican are going to insist that the actions of a few radicals reflect on the the Democratic party as a whole, then it is only fair for us to make a commercial that is 60 seconds of people reading the comments section at Little Green Footballs over images of Bush speaking. Or juxtapose images of militia members suiting up and arming themselves with pictures of Bush speaking. But we've refrained from doing so, even though the conservative side has allowed extremists to be put forward as mainstream pundits, something the left has refused to do. Helly, all we need to do is run an ad of the neo-fascist statements Ann Coulter has made over images of Bush speaking, things like killing Muslims, "jokes" about killing liberals, statements equating being in another political party with being a traitor.
But above all, I reminded my cat that anyone who knows even the basic fundamentals of film theory knows that juxtaposing images is filmspeak for equating, or at least relating the two, and that the audience reads that subconsciously. The first thing they show you in a film class is the scene from The Godfather where Michael Corleone is at a baptism cut with scenes of his enemies getting systematically murdered on his orders around town, reminding the audience of the ugly side of this man who looks for the world like a devout Catholic without the cutting back and forth. And even if everyone in the Republican party who approved this ad disavows even knowing what movies are, it's still impossible for the person who actually did the editing not to know that by pairing Kerry and Hitler, you were implying a connection. In fact, that was exactly the problem that the Republicans had with the MoveOn submissions.
Max said, "Meow" and went and got his ball for me to throw. I took this to mean that he didn't care and that he was going to vote for Bush anyway. But he doesn't know that cats can't vote, and even if they could he's not 18 yet, so I didn't worry about it too much.

*He is also horribly vain and signs up for free samples of all sorts of make-up and hair supplies. And he's been known to illegally download music. I don't know what I'm going to do with him. Especially if he continues to take Penthouse Magazine, even though I asked him to cancel his subscription.