Any wonder why more than 50 percent of registered voters don't vote?

I have a really hard time taking a finger-wagging from people who get paid by big-time media conglomerates (i.e. Scripps-Howard) on the quality of political ads.

Why?

Well, ask yourself -- who's making the profit from airing these ads? Who's getting paid to broadcast this gutter filth?

JUST MAYBE ... if there were standards for fairness in advertising, or if equal time provisions were reinstated, we wouldn't be subjected to this crap in the first place.

I don't mean to make this personal, Michael, but there is some truth to the notion that people won't understand what they're paid not to understand. I say this as a kid who's descended from 2 generations in print media.

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Forget patriotism. Instapundit.com is the last refuge of scoundrels.

But anyone who says "I don't see anything racist in that ad" is a joke of a human being whom I dearly hope is a member of that 50% that Silence mentions.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I agree with you 100% on that. They are using the reverse racist ju-jitsu to great effect to innoculate their candidate. And they should be told that forcefully.

The trouble is that when you cross the line into enemy territory, you let them set the rules of engagement. All I'm saying is don't get sucked in.

Halfdan, so? Why mention the playboy party? Try again.

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SayUncle
Can't we all just get a long gun?

Go watch the ad. The bimbo says "I met Harold at the Playboy party." Then at the end of the ad the same bimbo tells Howard to call her.

Hey, Les, why don't we just call each other assholes and get it over with. - Somebody on the old Southknoxbubba.net (if that was you, claim your quote and win net.fame!)

No offense taken. I have always found your writing and points to be civil and reasonable. Honestly, you prescribe way too much sophistication to us. I most certainly did not mean to be finger waging.

Well, thanks. I addressed Spintrep's concerns already, but let me spell out what I meant.

The comment about how less than 50% of the population votes is hardly attributable solely to the debased discourse on the Internet. Matter of fact, the discourse started getting ugly years ago.

I peg a lot of the really negative stuff to around 1987 when the Fairness Doctrine was, for all intents and purposes, abolished by the FCC. And yes, I know that print media doesn't have quite the pull that broadcast media does, but still. If you really want to voter dynamics vis-a-vis participation, I'd rank "partisan exchanges on Internet forum" as about 487th on a long list of other aggravating factors. Big money meets broadcast media is one. Lowered standards among broadcasters might be up there too. Abdication of responsibility for reporting facts among media outlets being yet anohter.

Why do fewer people participate? They get turned off. Who's slinging the mud? Political consultants and PR firms. Who's getting paid to blast that message into your homes? ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox. None of this is a big stretch.

I'm also a husband, a father, a voter, a taxpayer, a friend, a consumer, a concerned citizen and a flippant SOB. All I'm asking is don't paint us with broad brushes. You'd be lucky to get three people in here to agree on where to go to lunch!

The lunchtime standard wouldn't be a very good one in any working environment.

I wasn't trying to portray this as a broad-brush issue. It's more like this: If you want to seriously discuss the dynamic of voter turnoff, let's talk about issues like PAC contributions to political campaigns, or how the standards for truth in advertising have mutated into standards for truthiness.

It really bothers me that a professional journalist -- and I assume you read my post about the Tennessean's political editor -- would say that it's incumbent upon the outcome of an election to determine the veracity of a claim. Would this mean that, since he lost, that Max Cleland really was an Osama-loving coward who wanted America to be attacked repeatedly? Is that the operational standard? Sure sounded like it on NPR this morning.

If that's the set of assumptions which guides the Tennessean's editorial staff, then maybe I would be better off just reading blogs to get my information.

FYI: Political advertising revenue is a very small percentage of newpapers' revenue. I can't tell you what percentage that is because I've never paid much attention to it.

Yes, but note that in my original post that I said "Scripps-Howard." They do own media outlets other than print media last time I checked.

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Forget patriotism. Instapundit.com is the last refuge of scoundrels.

The KKKorker stuff etc. was pretty offensive.

They started it but I am sorry you were offended...Ah....not really...I think Corker deserves the derision and frankly, I think the worst is yet to come. We will all be offended by Corker ads before this is over, not just those with tender sensibilities such as Gemini.

I still contend that the Republican's "Southern Strategy" is well grounded in fanning the flames of bigotry.

Ford's strength will be rising above that and inviting Republicans to repudiate  this incompetent administration and helping to change America.

posted within the last month or so. Clearly the Corker campaign overlooks the mite in its own eye if it's using as evidence of the Ford campaign's "desperation" the posting of thematically similar, but not topically related, images on unaffiliated weblogs, or posts which are merely commenting on images contained in national media outlets.

Since the Corker folks are now using idly posted Photoshop images on independent websites to prop up their campaign, I plan to remove such evidence as is easily available. It's too bad they are continuing their pattern of distortions in press, media and other outlets into the blogosphere. These tactics are disappointing, but not unexpected.

For the record, "Ford supporters" are not "using Klan propaganda." The Photoshop job was posted by blogger Billmon, as in (link...), a national blogger who's been commenting on the national news story about the "Call Me" ad. I personally am guilty of linking to an outside source for their take on a local situation, but given that Tennessee blogger Instapundit partakes of this tactic every day of the week without any particular denouncement by weblogs save this one, I don't think critics of that methodology have a leg to stand on.

I sincerely doubt the Ford campaign would have had the time or inclination to personally contact every reporter in the United States who ran a story about disturbing aspects of the "Call Me" ad, and it seems unfair to hold Rep. Ford personally responsible for the reactions of same. Marginalizing the thoughts of the hundreds of thousands of people who have now seen the ad and found it disturbing is a classic Republican ploy, similar to the commentary White House Press Secretary Tony Snow delivered the other day on Hardball when he claimed (and I quote directly): "Every African American candidate plays the race card when things happen he doesn't like." I'm quite sure he was referring to Democratic African American candidates, since there are about 43 times more African American Democrats as Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

Look, I'm sorry if the fact that this ad has ignited a national firestorm for the Corker people is inconvenient for them. And it's unfortunate (for them, anyway) that the net result has been a tidal wave of support for Rep. Ford from people throughout the country who have been offended by the ad. Some of those people are likely to have made financial contributions as well, a fact likely painful to the Corker campaign, which is now scrambling to raise more money...

I'd be surprised were the Corker camp not to try to spin this any way imaginable, particularly since the creator of the "Call Me" ad has been revealed as one Scott Howell, the same consultant who brought you advertising denouncing triple amputee war hero Max Cleland as 'unpatriotic', the ad comparing Virginia governor Tim Kaine to Hitler, and the image of black hands counting welfare money in a commercial supporting Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn.

Personally, I fail to see how posting images of wrongs committed by avowed racists throughout the history of the country when confronted with offensive language by people outside the mainstream political spectrum is in any way connected to advertising being aired by the Corker campaign, but given the lengths these guys have gone to to discredit Rep. Ford? I sure wouldn't put it past them and am now going to redact them all, even though my personal views should not be construed as representative of those of the Ford campaign.

Steve, I'd been waiting to hear from you on this.

As an off-white person who grew up in the white community here during the 50s and 60s, I was called a nigger -- to my face -- more times than I want to remember. My dad is descended from, literally, the oldest white family in Tennessee (the first white child born here was Russell Bean -- look it up). My mother is Puerto Rican. The second day of school after my family moved out to the country, at least one parent of almost every one of my new 6th-grade classmates came by Ritta Elementary School to get a look at the nigger -- me. When violence erupted in other parts of the country over the next three years, classmates would seek me out on the playground to inform me that "the niggers are needed in Little Rock" or Birmingham or Mississippi. To some extent this continued into high school and even college (UT was just barely integrated in those days).

Granted, I'm an old broad, but I haven't outlived all those people. They exist. They live right here in Knoxville. I know who and where they are. Hell, a fair number of them have the cojones to call me up every once in awhile and ask me to write about their kids or their churches or schools or their troubles, and they tell me how much they liked me back in the day. They are mostly Republicans, and I have not one doubt in this world that tonight they are bitching about the Democrats playing the "race card" over these TV spots. They are probably think the TV spots are funny, and I'd bet a bunch that, at most, they're calling them "tacky" because of the sexual element to the ad.

They also wonder why black folks don't vote Republican.