Seriously?
This is the best we've got?
Speaking as someone who bought into the spirit of community activism that the people at MoveOn.org offered in the months leading up to the 2004 Presidential election, it's really disappointing to see how out of whack their sense of the country's political climate has become. The same people who once decried the negative advertising from groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth as "outrageous" continue to confound their own goals by engaging in the same kind of juvenile, school yard name-calling that they claim to be above.
Does this mean that the people at MoveOn don't have valid points to make? Of course not. General Petraeus deserves to be under the fullest scrutiny we as a nation can muster, and if something shady is, in fact, going on, then by all means, let us know. Just find a better way to do it than with a New York Times ad that apes "Seinfeld" without retaining any of the original's charm, timeliness, or yadda yadda yadda.
These guys? Clever. Churlish PACs? Not quite the same.
What pisses me off the most is that stuff like this plays directly into the hands of those people who like to paint progressive Democrats as godless, baby-spiking milquesops. Ads like this don't advance the conversation; rather, they make that little vein on Harry Reid's forehead come that much closer to just ending it all right in front of everyone and force the party to trot out old standbys like John Kerry to dismiss the ad's claims as "over the top". Are they? Again, not necessarily. But, by putting them in the context of vitriolic attack ads, MoveOn forces the Democrats to tiptoe and vacillate instead of focusing on the actual particulars of the Iraq mission. You catch more flies with honey than you do with lame puns, and MoveOn needs to hurry up and realize that. To steal from "Seinfeld" yet again, these ads just give the Republicans all of the hand in the relationship. The Democrats? No hand!
Hand: tough to get.
Man... I hate it when they make me agree with John Kerry. It's really no way to start the week.
2 comments:
I'm very glad we agree on this (though I never doubted that some liberals out there find certain MoveOn antics to be shameless).
It's sad that both sides stoop to low levels of name-calling and even libel and slander.
You make a valid point; no one loses more then our own Democrats when one group chooses to play to the lowest common denominator. This ad causes Dems to have to fight the stupidity of it, not the more important issues that warrant questioning.
Three cheers for pointing it out.
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