Thursday, March 22, 2007
Anti-Hillary Ad making waves
An attack ad on Hillary Clinton that parodies 1984 has been making noise. It is a splice of an old Apple commercial that shows Hillary speaking from a huge screen to an audience of drones.
At first this ad didn’t particular resonate with the Clarion one way or the other, but the response was enormous. Was is it just the news industry making sound and fury signifying nothing?
The message of the ad does strike the Clarion as place where Hillary is vulnerable to attack from Obama. She is dynastic. She on some level represents continuity. The nation is looking at twenty years of Bushes and Clinton already. Do they want another Clinton, so we can have twenty-four or twenty-eight straight years of Bushes and Clintons? Can Obama attack that as more of the same? Says yes here.
Of course, that is not where the pundits are running with the story. Their spew is about Obama running an attack ad. They self-righteously inveigh, "He said he was going to run a different kind of campaign." At first the source of the ad was unknown, but just recently an employee of an Obama campaign subcontractor ‘fessed up that he wrote the ad. He did it on his own time and own volition. Supposedly.
To the Clarion this whole issue is moot. It is nowhere near the most important issue we will select out presidential candidate on, whether or not they run attack ads. And by the standards of attack ads this ad is no Willie Horton. Now that's a negative ad. (Which, of course, helped put "Bush I" over the top.)
It is much more important to the Clarion how Hillary and Barak will handle policy, than how they campaign. On some level this ad points to one of the Clarion's central indictments the Clintons governing methodology. Clinton governerned far too much by the polls and popular opinion for the Clarion’s taste. There was little center, little governing philosophy. Just because the last eight years have been premised on a philosophy that the Clarion disagrees with does not mean that it is not good for the president to have a solid center of core tenets, beyond values.
There is no way that Hillary is going to be Bill, but even in the moments when she had power during his presidency, she seemed to set her course by the winds of the moment. The splice of her speech that is in this clip symbolizes that attitude, as does her stance on Iraq. Conversely, Obama excudes leadership and a willingness to chart a course based on what he believes is right, as does his early opposition to war with Iraq.
This is not an endorsement of any candidate but food for thought.
Comment section has a comment from a blog on the Washington Post’s website. Some well said thoughts about the recursive power of images.
At first this ad didn’t particular resonate with the Clarion one way or the other, but the response was enormous. Was is it just the news industry making sound and fury signifying nothing?
The message of the ad does strike the Clarion as place where Hillary is vulnerable to attack from Obama. She is dynastic. She on some level represents continuity. The nation is looking at twenty years of Bushes and Clinton already. Do they want another Clinton, so we can have twenty-four or twenty-eight straight years of Bushes and Clintons? Can Obama attack that as more of the same? Says yes here.
Of course, that is not where the pundits are running with the story. Their spew is about Obama running an attack ad. They self-righteously inveigh, "He said he was going to run a different kind of campaign." At first the source of the ad was unknown, but just recently an employee of an Obama campaign subcontractor ‘fessed up that he wrote the ad. He did it on his own time and own volition. Supposedly.
To the Clarion this whole issue is moot. It is nowhere near the most important issue we will select out presidential candidate on, whether or not they run attack ads. And by the standards of attack ads this ad is no Willie Horton. Now that's a negative ad. (Which, of course, helped put "Bush I" over the top.)
It is much more important to the Clarion how Hillary and Barak will handle policy, than how they campaign. On some level this ad points to one of the Clarion's central indictments the Clintons governing methodology. Clinton governerned far too much by the polls and popular opinion for the Clarion’s taste. There was little center, little governing philosophy. Just because the last eight years have been premised on a philosophy that the Clarion disagrees with does not mean that it is not good for the president to have a solid center of core tenets, beyond values.
There is no way that Hillary is going to be Bill, but even in the moments when she had power during his presidency, she seemed to set her course by the winds of the moment. The splice of her speech that is in this clip symbolizes that attitude, as does her stance on Iraq. Conversely, Obama excudes leadership and a willingness to chart a course based on what he believes is right, as does his early opposition to war with Iraq.
This is not an endorsement of any candidate but food for thought.
Comment section has a comment from a blog on the Washington Post’s website. Some well said thoughts about the recursive power of images.
Labels: 2008's President, Politics
Comments:
from a blog on the Washington Post
This is an important ad --- not for artisan reasons but becuase of its implications. The digital age has introduced the concept of the recursive image - a highly compact communication that is symbolic, impressionistic, and information dense. It contains a huge amount of information, that is unbundled by implication, events such as this ad. Recursive image succeeds becuase it connects with something real in its subject matter. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth succceeded with Kerry because he seemed to be a resume building, class president kind of guy. The idea that his purple heart may have been earned through sucking up rather than real action may or may not have been true, but it seemed to align with other aspects of Kerry's peronality and history. It had a resonance that was hard to stop.
The danger for Hillary is that she has some clear negatives - like Kerry a resume building, elite-oriented, class-president kind of person. Add to that the last 20 years of presidencies have been either Bushes or a Clinton, and the idea of 28 years of presidencies belonging to two families does begin to feel like Big Brother. The ad plays off of those impressions. This could be the beginning of a wave of recursive images that sink her chances.
Posted by: Dee-El
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This is an important ad --- not for artisan reasons but becuase of its implications. The digital age has introduced the concept of the recursive image - a highly compact communication that is symbolic, impressionistic, and information dense. It contains a huge amount of information, that is unbundled by implication, events such as this ad. Recursive image succeeds becuase it connects with something real in its subject matter. Swift Boat Veterans for Truth succceeded with Kerry because he seemed to be a resume building, class president kind of guy. The idea that his purple heart may have been earned through sucking up rather than real action may or may not have been true, but it seemed to align with other aspects of Kerry's peronality and history. It had a resonance that was hard to stop.
The danger for Hillary is that she has some clear negatives - like Kerry a resume building, elite-oriented, class-president kind of person. Add to that the last 20 years of presidencies have been either Bushes or a Clinton, and the idea of 28 years of presidencies belonging to two families does begin to feel like Big Brother. The ad plays off of those impressions. This could be the beginning of a wave of recursive images that sink her chances.
Posted by: Dee-El
