Dirty campaign ads 2012

[Nosi]

Geez, why didn't they just go whole-hog and have her wear one of those conical coolie hats, holding a pair of chopsticks while pulling a rickshaw? This is the sort of thing that happens when everyone on your team thinks exactly the way you do, and there's no one there to say "now hold on a second."

This might have worked a lot better (or at least less offensively) if she actually spoke Chinese and they ran subtitles, that way you wouldn't have gotten the stereotypical Charlie Chan broken English. But perhaps Mr. Hoekstra is aiming at a constituency whose reading skills are not quite sufficiently well-developed to follow along that quickly.

If they were dealing with nonreaders, the woman could speak Chinese and have a different person do a voice over translation in English. That is often done in documentries.

 

[Stellafane]

Actually, on second viewing, I think she is wearing a conical hat, but on her back, not her head. You can see the edges of it and the string around her neck. Then just to make sure you know it's in Asia they show rice paddies.

Gosh, you're right. I guess the Hoekstra crew consider themselves "sensitive" by not having her spout some "ching-chong-chow" cartoon gibberish.

Still, all in all it's kind of a lousy ad. After all, any real politico knows that truly effective messages are ones that scare the hell out of voters. And this one just isn't that frightening -- a young Asian beauty, serenely bicycling through a bucolic agrarian landscape the likes of which few Michiganers ever get to see first-hand. What's the point, that if not for Spend-It-Now Michigan would be the rice capital of the world? Shucks, if you can look past the woman's faint trace of a tofu-eating grin, the overall image is actually pretty peaceful.

I think it would have been far more effective for the spokesperson to be a stern-looking male, clad in a Mao jacket with the Little Red Book peeking out of the pocket (all true Americans know they're all still Commies at heart), standing in a vast multi-acre factory with thousands of workers in the background cranking out cars and iPhones and missiles, barking his message straight at the poor viewer like he's already their boss. Now that would have gotten the constituency's attention!

 

[Puppycow]

Pete Hoekstra Removes Racist Campaign Ad from the Internet

Michigan Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra has removed his "DebbieSpenditNow" ad from the internet, weeks after his xenophobic Super Bowl ad caused an uproar.

ABC News reports that the ad has been removed from YouTube, Facebook, and Hoekstra's campaign page. Hoekstra has yet to personally distance himself from the ad, though the actress who performed in it has. So what's behind the retreat? Maybe it's a new poll that puts his rival Debbie Stabenow 21 points ahead of Hoekstra. Looks like it's time for a new campaign strategy.

It restores my faith in humanity when a truly despicable ad like this backfires.
(Sometimes they work though. The clever ones do. This one was stupid and inept as well as despicable.)