Newsweek Asks: Whose Hitler Images Are More Offensive?
The Dubya campaign recently emailed a “webmercial” (their word, not mine) to six million or so supporters this past week. The video, entitled ‘The Coalition of the Wild-Eyed’ features images of popular left wingers, and everyone’s favorite fascist, Adolph Hitler.
The fuhrer footage is overlaid with the words “sponsored by MoveOn.org” while the ad’s opening screen says “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party.”
MoveOn.org, a left-wing political fundraising group, immediately objected. “We never sponsored those [Hitler] ads, we didn’t condone them,” says Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn PAC. He says the Hitler clips originally appeared on the group’s Web site in January as part of the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest as part of two of the 1,100 entries the organization received After learning that the offensive Hitler spots were on the site—and facing criticism for them—MoveOn.org removed the entries. The Hitler submissions were up for 10 days “during which they were seen by a couple hundred people, including apparently, a [Republican National Committee] researcher, who posted them on the RNC site,” says Pariser. The new Bush ad “is worse than the pot calling the kettle black. They’re certainly going to regret it—it looks like a vicious partisan attack.”
The Bush camp argues the Hitler ads are fair game. After all, says Bush-Cheney ’04 spokesman Scott Stanzel, the video did first appear on the MoveOn site. “It’s indicative of the type of vitriol that we have seen from John Kerry and his surrogates,” he says.
The Newsweek article continues, mentioning a few other recent Nazi references by politicos on both sides. Al Gore is quoted saying the current “administration works closely with a network of rapid responders, a group of digital brownshirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors and publishers and advertisers, and are quick to accuse them of undermining support for our troops.”
In a related story, FreeRepublic The National Review declares Gore’s Gone Wild [NSFL*]. Tragically funny.
*Link not safe for lefties; “A Conservative News Forum”
funny, the brownshirts which gore is referring to are the freepers.
i also think it’s a bit outrageous that the guy whose grandfathers bankrolled the nazis is alluding to his opponent being a nazi, when it’s obvious to anyone with an accurate sense of history who the bigger nazi is.
More on this very same subject from Jewschool here, and here and in The Forward here.
And just watch the Hare Dubya cult play American Jewish leadership like a warped fiddle all summer long: “Oy! If Bush loses, Arafat wins….”
Ok so–that article on Free Republic is from the National Review Online and was written by a certain Ms. Barbara Comstock. She used to work for the Bush administration as a DOJ spokesperson. Check out Ms. Comstock being interview by Ted Koppel last year, and watch Koppel rip her a new asshole for completely evading questions.
I saw this commercial on CNN
Are we really all this green?
i’m working on an op-ed about this for jewsweek…
Mo, I say if the Bushies want the Nazi tag to be on the table, that’s fine. They will be humiliated. Hypocrites… unbelievable.
It’s shows how desparate they truly are though…
Good post…
I agree fully!
http://www.yeshivaboy.tk
I agree fully!
http://www.yeshivaboy.tk
So Mobius, are you saying Bush is wrong for saying that his opponents call him a Nazi? Then in the same comment, you are calling Bush a Nazi?
no–i didn’t say it was “wrong” of him, tho i think it is. i said i think it’s ironic that a nazi’s descendant is throwing around the nazi thing when, under scrutiny, he’d be the first and easiset cast under that assertion.
that was just my first reaction tho. my thoughts will be much more centered and developed in jewsweek.
Hold on a second, and forget the Nazi thing. Bush may be a lot of things, but he’s not a Nazi. BUT, according to this logic, a candidate is responsible for anything their supporters say. I could write pages, but I don’t have my Al Franken books with me, and I’d like to be brief. Let’s hear from Bush’s “coalition”
“I am the federal government.”
–Tom DeLay
“I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote.”
–Ann Coulter
“Fuck off”
–Dick Cheney, on the Senate floor, to a Senator
you get the idea.
a candidate isnt responsible for everything his supporters say, that doesnt make sense. But this is the bush campaign website were talking about.
Also, the “fuck off” by cheney, bush might not be responsible for it, but cheney sure is, and hes on the ticket.
Its disgusting that bush used that. And he justified it by saving the hitler image was first used by moveon.org, but that is a lie. Moveon had a contest and an ad which feature hitler was entered, but the ad was quickly pulled from the website. There is no justification for Bush’s action
y’all are misunderstanding the context of the nazi stuff within the bush ad.
what they’re trying to show are the so-called “ills” of which the democrats are capable. so they show all these democrats amped up and looking scary, and among them, intersperse the footage of the moveon ad. “see–look how crazy these people are! look what they’re saying about our president! look–they’ve compared him to hitler!”
however, since the person making the commercial, er well, sucks at his job, OR, because they intentionally wanted it to appear this way, to the average layman watching the commercial who has zero knowledge of the moveon incident (which is likely the majority of americans) it appears as though the implication is being made that the democratic leadership are nazis.
that’s what makes the commercial troubling and dangerous and worse yet, exploitative.
and it’s interesting, actually–because you’ve gotta ask yourself, “who is this commercial geared towards,” because only super-aware conservatives and liberals are familiar with the context of the moveon commercial.
so the ad says either “yes, fellow conservatives, let us rally together in this moment with this commercial and ruminate in our detestment of liberals” or it says “haha fuck you democrats, we hope this makes you furious.” because if it’s geared to the general public, then it may very well be a callous attempt to associate nazis with democrats in the minds of the uninformed public.
Liberaljew, I know people shouldn’t be held responsible for what their supporters say, I was only pointing out that Bush seems to be throwing stones from the window of his glass house.
Mo, I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet, but the ADL has denounced this as well. Since you called on them to do so, I thought it might be consistant of you to blog this as well. I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, just thought I’d point you in that direction. I’d love to hear what you have to say.
http://tinylink.com/?Hqz0IaeMyD