Voters bamboozled by political ads

Advertising is always a dubious path to the truth. But political advertising is a pack of lies-- and even damned lies. Anyone who votes on the basis of political ads is probably voting for a prevaricator.
As another election cycle heats up, voters are being bombarded by fantasy and not fact, distortion rather than truth, ads that have nothing to do with the issues and qualifications.
The New York Times calls such ads “a jarring blend of shadowy images, breathless announcers, jagged music and a dizzying array of statistics, counterstatistics and vote citations, all intended to present the members of Congress and their challengers in the worst possible light.”
This dreadful situation was skewered locally by Cory Farley, Reno Gazette-Journal columnist. He wrote:
“Watching Sen. John Ensign’s emerald-hued campaign ads on television, you might think you’ve been privileged to witness the resurrection of John Muir. Lake Tahoe sparkles in the sunlight. A crystalline Truckee River flows past the camera. A narrator and text on the screen bear down heavily on words like ‘protect’ and ‘preserve.’ ’’
Wow! Ensign is greener than the Sierra Club.
Yet the truth is otherwise. The Nevada senator gets a 20 percent rating from the nonpartisan League of Conservation Voters, “among the worst in Congress.” (N.B.: Rep. Jim Gibbons, candidate for governor, is even worse on the LCV scale: zero.)
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Newspapers write a lot of nonsense about who wins or loses debates. Partisans will always think their side won. Moreover, debates rarely change minds.
The first governatorial debate between state senator Dina Titus and Gibbons on the University of Nevada campus recently certainly changed no minds.
Gibbons, a howling conservative, has just one note: he won’t raise taxes but Titus will. He insists on a two-thirds majority vote by the Legislature to pass any tax increase. Titus, a liberal, is far more intelligent and far more forward-looking. Reasons enough for Gibbons to win.
Jon Ralston of Las Vegas, perhaps the best political analyst in Nevada, doubts if Democrats Titus and Jill Derby can be elected governor and congresswoman. “The demographics are against them,” Ralston remarked recently to a Nevada Press Association gathering in Las Vegas.
Voters in Derby’s 2nd district of Nevada have never elected a Democrat since the district was first contested in 1982. The latest poll is running true to form, showing Republican Dean Heller leading 45-42. However, The Times says the seat “could be in play.”
Nevada has never elected a woman governor. Polls consistently show Gibbons with a substantial lead, 45 percent to 36 percent, well beyond the margin of error.
Still, “hope springs eternal in the human breast,” as poet Pope noted. Titus and Derby could win if the anti-Bush tide is flowing as strongly as it ought to.
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The Reno Gazette-Journal was sabotaged recently on the op-ed page. A letter writer wrote that she was leaving Reno because it had turned into “a large homogenized blend of big-box stores and suburban neighbors.” The saboteur appended a footnote: “Good riddance.”
But the insulting and unprofessional editor’s note was not written by any of the top editors. Tonia Cunning, executive editor of the RGJ, said in an email that she could not share details but that printing the note was an error.
The episode recalls my newspaper days in Baltimore when the printers sometimes sabotaged the paper. The word shot would be changed to shit. Once a four-letter word, not written by a staffer, turned up in print. The paper scrapped 20,000 copies of the first edition.
Benét’s Reader’s Encyclopedia has three pages nicknaming editions of the Bible over the centuries. Most of the mistakes were typographical errors. But you can’t help thinking that some misprints were deliberate.
For instance, the Wicked Bible printed in London in 1632. In it the seventh commandment says: “Thou shalt commit adultery.” The Unrighteous Bible printed in Cambridge in 1653 renders 1 Corinthians 6:9: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”
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Chip Bok of the Akron Beacon Journal deserves a Pulitizer Prize for a recent editorial cartoon. It showed Pope Benedict XVI declaring: “I’m sorry my remarks about Islamic violence provoked Islamic violence.”
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It is a sick country when the approval rating of President Bush goes up just because gas prices fall. But that is not surprising. A Harris poll last summer showed that 50 percent of Americans still believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and 64 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was linked to al Qaeda.