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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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McFeatters: Midterm political ads put Truth-o-meter to test

The Columbian
Published:

There is so little interest in the upcoming midterm elections, when 36 governors, all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be elected, that a lot of people may be surprised that somebody named Ebola is not on the ballot.

That’s about all the media have focused on this autumn.

It’s hard to blame voters for their ennui. The campaign ads are so negative — the most negative crop in recent years, according to those who track this — and off the point, one has to send little children out of the room. “Daddy! Daddy! What’s castrating hogs mean?” Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who wants to be in the Senate, is responsible for that one. She wants to go to Washington to make the big spenders “squeal.”

And then there are the famous “Say Yes to the Dress” copycat ads, where a bride-to-be wants the “modern” Rick Scott gown, referring to the Republican who wants to be re-elected Florida’s governor, while her “old-fashioned” mother insists on the Charlie Crist dress, a frumpy, over-frilled frock supposed to represent the Democrat seeking the governor’s job. Declares the classically awful mom: “It’s expensive and a little outdated, but I know best.”

Really, folks, some Republicans have a strange sense of humor. And a strange view of women. The ads are supposed to be a clever strategy to win women’s votes. The GOP was so proud of this ad, it created nearly half a dozen just like it. Same ad, just change the names of the candidates in other states.

The mothers I know are not amused.

Perhaps you are wondering what the real issues of this campaign are across the country? More war? Higher wages for workers? Climate change? Gun control? Same-sex marriage? Voter rights? Obamacare? More restrictions on abortion?

If you watch the ads, it turns out many candidates think the real questions of the day are: Have you ever said anything nice about Barack Obama (a no-no)? Did you ever give money to a group that gave humanitarian relief aid in any way to people who might be Muslims? If you are a lawyer, did you ever represent a client who was guilty? Shouldn’t we just let fate lead us out of the peril of a carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere? Were you ever in a strip club with a dancer wearing nothing but a G string? Did you ever complain about towel service while using the Capitol gym?

Keeping them honest

In the last legs of this admittedly dreary campaign season, we should all resolve not to get our information about the candidates from their TV ads. Thus, we are indebted to the nonpartisan organizations that run the ads through the truth mill — such as FactCheck.org at the University of Pennsylvania — for putting the kibosh on misleading ads.

For example, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, who is gunning to be the next leader of the Senate if it turns Republican, claims in a TV ad to have “shocking” evidence that his opponent Alison Lundergan Grimes lied about her support for coal. She didn’t, and he doesn’t.

On the other hand, Grimes accused McConnell of taking $600,000 from anti-coal groups. It turns out his wife has been paid $648,000 over three years for sitting on the board of Wells Fargo, a bank which has a policy of opposing extracting coal by mountaintop mining. She also sits on the board of Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has a goal of retiring one-third of the country’s aging coal-fired power plants by 2020.

PolitiFact.org, put out by the Tampa Bay Times, is another worthy independent source for sorting out truth from fiction in political statements.

Tell you what. If you go to other sources for information on the candidates, such as televised debates and newspapers, we’ll watch the ads so you don’t have to. You can take your child to the zoo and teach them about castration on your own terms.


Ann McFeatters is an op-ed columnist for McClatchy-Tribune. Email: amcfeatters@nationalpress.com.

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