Chicken and/or Waffles

Friday, June 25, 2004

Hitler is played out

Someone signed me on to the "For the love of christ, elect Kerry" mailing list. I'm not naming names, though I have my suspicians. The point is, today I recieved one of the begging emails they tend to send out from time to time, saying:

Dear Gregory,

Yesterday, the Bush-Cheney campaign, losing any last sense of decency, placed a disgusting ad called "The Faces of John Kerry's Democratic Party" as the main feature on its website. Bizarrely, and without explanation, the ad places Adolf Hitler among those faces.

The Bush-Cheney campaign must pull this ad off of its website. The use of Adolf Hitler by any campaign, politician or party is simply wrong.

.

Now, I'm not so much against Hitler as a comparison becuase of the horrible inaccuracy of the implicit message of such comparisons - rather, I'm against the lack of originality. Hitler was a bad person. Yes. We get that. But there are so many other dictators to choose from! Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush, for example, both largely owe their presidencies to George H.W. Bush. It reminds me of a joking ad that someone made, with a picture of John Waters daintily holding a cigarette which read, "John Waters smokes. John Waters is very gay. I'm just sayin'..."

Even then, an ad campaign could be completely accurate in saying something like, "Joe Senator pushed for gun registration, lowered crime, and reinvigorated a dead economy... JUST LIKE HITLER." It would just be nice if at least one side of the campaign would say that things the candidate did were bad becuase they were bad, not becuase someone else did them, too. God knows that with these two, that should be easy enough.

cranked out at 7:58 PM | |