Der Furor
Bush plays the Nazi card.
By William Saletan and Jacob Weisberg
Posted Monday, June 28, 2004, at 4:13 PM PT
Chill, dude
"Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed" was produced for the Bush campaign by Maverick Media. To watch the video on the Bush campaign Web site, click here. For a script, click here.
From: William Saletan
To: Jacob Weisberg
Where to begin with this despicable video?
Six months ago, MoveOn.org held a contest to find the best amateur ad against President Bush. The group invited people to make ads and submit them to its Web site. Some idiot spliced images of Bush together with images of Adolf Hitler, evidently trying to make Bush look like a warmonger. His submissions, which arrived with 1,500 others—too many to be screened quickly—were posted on the contest Web site. As soon as MoveOn.org leaders realized what was in the ad, they removed and denounced it.
The Bush campaign, outraged by the mixture of Nazi images with images of an American politician, has decided that the best response to this offense is to repeat it.
The Bush video's opening white-on-black graphic says, "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party. The Coalition of the Wild-eyed." Next comes a parade of angry speakers: Al Gore, Hitler, Howard Dean, Michael Moore, Dick Gephardt, Hitler, Gore, and Kerry.
Is Bush suggesting that Hitler fits in with this group? Don't be silly, Jake. Bush's aides insist they're just showing the Hitler footage so you can see the filth Democrats are putting out. But we already know how Bush's GOP presents images from Democratic ads when it wants to discredit them. In 2000, Republican National Committee ads repeatedly depicted Al Gore's commercials running on a small television screen in a kitchen. The RNC ads didn't show the Gore ads at full size on your screen because the RNC didn't want the images in the Gore ads to be taken at face value.
This time, the Bush campaign shows the Hitler images at full size, in an unexplained sequence with Gore, Dean, Gephardt, and Kerry. Draw your own conclusions. |
