DNC Launches E-Mail Cartoon Lampooning Bush
URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,89580,00.html
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
WASHINGTON — The animation is not all that sharp but the Democrats' message is: President Bush is Dr. Frankenstein and he wants to put a monster on the Supreme Court.
"I'm creating the perfect Supreme Court justice. A right-wing extremist the likes of which have never been seen before," says the low-budget e-mail cartoon the Democratic National Committee (search) is sending Tuesday to hundreds of thousands of Democrats.
The cartoon, a replacement for the typically costly television advertisement, is also being posted on the Web site to try to whip up anger over Bush's judicial nominees.
In the ads, Democrats refer to a secret lab under the White House where "Bush-enstein" raves that his creation has body parts from conservative Justices Antonin Scalia (search) and Clarence Thomas (search) as well as from defeated appeals court nominee Charles Pickering (search) and from both Priscilla Owen (search) and Miguel Estrada (search), whom Democrats are filibustering.
Vice President Dick Cheney, cast as Bush-enstein's sidekick Igor, wants to know more.
"And the heart," Cheney asks, to which Bush replies: "Heart? We don't need a heart."
A switch is turned on, pumping a black substance — perhaps oil, in reference to the president's ties to the industry — into Bush's monster and off it goes in judicial robes to destroy the nation's high court.
The announcer ends by saying: "Don't let George Bush reconstruct the Supreme Court. Let's make sure the next justice has American values, not right-wing values."
Democrats call the new cartoon a comic approach aimed at inciting a grassroots Democratic uprising against the president before the next election and before he gets the chance to fill any Supreme Court vacancies.
"This is really using humor to talk about a very serious subject, that is the kind of thing at stake if George W. Bush actually gets to make an appointment to the Supreme Court," said Democratic political consultant Kiki Moore.
But what Democrats call humorous, Republicans term hateful.
"The ad reveals a litmus test of sorts for the Democratic Party," said Republican attorney and strategist Manus Cooney. "If you're not extreme left, if you aren't pro-abortion under any circumstance, if you don't bow to the will of [liberal advocacy group] People for the American Way (search), then you are a monster."
While Republicans dismiss the Democrats' cartoon as a lame attempt at humor, at best, they are not ignoring the message that on the campaign trail and in Congress, Democrats are attacking Bush's judicial nominees with the utmost seriousness.
Fox News' Carl Cameron contributed to this report |
