Slashdot Mirror
The Living Room Candidate
Karin Ponce writes "I represent the American Museum of the Moving Image , and I wanted to write to you about the Museum's latest online exhibition, The Living Room Candidate. The exhibition maintains a comprehensive and detailed collection of over 300 commercials from the past fourteen elections (1954-2000). As the presidential race heats up, I think this is a very timely exhibition that will equip your readers with insight on the development of the campaign messages crafted by our presidential candidates over the years and provide historical context for the 2004 campaign as the race unfolds. Its convenience (all commercials are available online in the Living Room Candidate website) make this exhibit a must-see for voters and non-voters."
A site with multiple streamed videos, this is sure to last.
Oh, they're historic campaign commercials ... oh, OK, nevermind ... no Slashdot Effect to worry about!
This looks like a good way to see if past presidents have fulfilled their election promises by looking at their agenda in commercials. One thing that sticks out in my mind is the "Rats" commercial in 2000, which was about Bush's prescription drug benefit plan. How did that work out, seeing how some have resorted to getting pharmaceuticals from Canada and elsewhere?
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Wow, I just went to the site and was perusing the 2004 election commercials. For once they gave a realistic view of our future.
Blank.
Remember to give serious thought to who you are voting for in November and make sure that those around you are at least somewhat educated on what they are voting for.
Sounds like as good a reason as any to limit the amount people can spend on a Presidential campaign.
yes, there are freedom of speech issues but most countries already deign to regulate political campaigning, especially around election time. it's not that much of a stretch to set a hard limit, and only allow it to increase with inflation. plus less of those stupid ads on tv.
in effect it prevents those voters who have more money donating more $$$ to their favoured candidate, and in essence getting "more than their one vote".
-- james
"I represent the American Museum of the Moving Image, and I wanted to write to you to ask you for your help in melting our Web server, bringing our entire site to a halt. I think this is something your audience would find particular interest in doing."
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Candidates with the more supporters are more likely to a) win and b) have more contributors.
I have an idea. Rather than watching campaign commercials, read each candidates Wikipedia page.
John Kerry
George Bush
That way you get unbiased info untainted by either party, with all the nitty gritty details. Try it with friends, see if they switch allegiances after seeing the truth.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
all the political ads have evolved in the same way as normal ads on telivision. Its just a way to sell dumb candidates to the unsuspecting people by making them look intelligent. How many political ads really give anything objective to think about or anything to think about at all. If people are making their choices based on ads in tv thats just really sad. you can keep bombarding the people with really useless stuff u call issues and completely sideline any real issues that people should be paying attention to which is what is happening in this election.
I'm surprised it's not on there weather channel yet!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I was just discussing policitians with my father a few minutes ago while we were lunching. In two weeks brazilians are going to vote to elect municipal mayors and during all the day there are candidates on the TV saying that he/she will do the best for the city and stuff like that. It is always the same bullshit.
These bla bla bla will never win an election, so in my opinion most of the campaign money is throw away with this kind of trash campaign. I don't know how about US, but here in Brazil the candidates usually spend millions and millions in order to get elected while there are hundreds of thousands starving, in such a poverty situation that most of us would not belive.
20 some comments & slashdotted!
Here's the google cache:
http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:http://livinCheck my journal for gmail invites!
For those of you unfamiliar with the Bush version 1.0/ Dukakis matchup in 1988, the Republicans made very good negative attack ad use of the case of Willie Horton, a first degree murderer on a weekend furlough program in Massachusetts endorsed by Dukakis. Horton, surprise and shock and awe, became a recidivist violent criminal on his furlough.
;-(
Since he's trailing Bush version 2.0 right now, what Kerry needs is a good Willie Horton type attack ad.
Bin Laden anyone?
The Democrats need the balls to launch a full force negative press assault on Bush. The popularity of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 prove that the public is receptive to serious Bush-bashing. Not wishy washy peripheral attacks and sniffing around the perimeter that Kerry seems married to right now, but a dead on hurricane force teeth gnashing polemic. Especially dismaying in Moore's movie is the revelation that Bush let the Bin Laden family fly out of the country in the days after 9/11/2001, when noone else was allowed to fly anywhere. Clearly a case of allegiance to big oil being more important than allegiance to the American public if there ever was one.
This revelation played well in theatres in Middle America, even in communities near military bases. Hello Kerry campaign: anyone listening? The Democrats need to grow a backbone and start pounding away at Bush where he is weakest.
So let us hope the Democrats find the cojones to attack Bush full force and head on in an attack ad blitz in October, Willie Horton style, or unfortunately for Americans (and the rest of the world for that matter), it's four more years of the drunken frat boy in big oil's pocket in the White House for us all.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I heard just last night at a Boy Scout meeting on the Communication merit badge, that in 1980 (?), Kenedy spent millions and millions (or .1 sagan) of dollars on advertising his campaign, only to find out afterward that it actually hurt him. He would have been better off if he had spent $0.
must-see for voters and non-voters
What about for the rest of us!?
While this is cool, the streams will kill their bandwidth shortly. Still, this is a cool idea, and I for one would like to see how many ads by outside groups have had the affect that it has this year. Yes, I'm talking about the 527 groups like swiftboatveterans and moveon. While I appreciate more viewpoints, it seems that these just get too radical and whomever has the most money gets the most influence.
Oh wait, even with the campain finance reform, NOTHING HAS REALLY CHANGED! - am yelling b/c I'm mad.
Please vote this year, everyone!
CB
free ipod and free gmail!
When political ads stopped being about the candidate, and his/her views and platforms, and when they started just being about bashing the other guy?
America has been successfully brainwashed into believing there are, and will only ever by, two choices. This makes politics simple, you only have to smear one guy, and it's just a contest to see who can smear the other guy better. Bushs platform is "Kerry sucks", Kerry's platform is "Bush sucks".
The last Bush commercial I saw said "John Kerry even voted against the Laci Perterson bill which would make it illegal to assault pregnant women." Well, it's obvious, of course, that Kerry is for assaults against pregnant women! What a bastard.
McCain was the rep. frontrunner, until a whisper campaign about his "mentally disabled black daughter" killed his hopes. The whispers of course didn't mention that she was adopted from Somalia or some country, the implied message was McCain knocked boots with a crack whore.
I haven't heard one real issue discussed during the entire pre-election smear fest. It's all about what Bush did or didn't do in the National Guard, and what Kerry did or didn't do in Vietnam. I haven't heard what either man plans to do or not do in Iraq, Syria or North Korea.
The ads are so shallow and transparent it amazes me. There's no subtlety or tact. I guess if Bush's commercials make him look like a petty asshole, it's irrelevant, as long as he's less petty and less of an asshole than Kerry.
The two party system we've imposed on ourselves have turned elections from "who will do the most good for our country?" into "who will do the least evil to our country?"
American politics are fucking sad. Two parties is not democracy, and not representative of the people. How could it be, when there are 50 states + D.C? How could the ideologies of 300 million people fit into either slot A or slot B?
Vote your conscience. Don't be satisfied with the lesser of two evils. Vote for someone you believe in. Whether or not they win, your vote sends a clear message.
I'd love to see the republicrats win, but with 50% or more of the votes going independant. That would send a real message, loud and clear, that people are sick of the way both parties have mangled the country.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I, for one, welcome our new politicial overlords
oh damn
Yes, the American people really haven't gotten enough Bush bashing. I mean, c'mon, we haven't even seen Al Franken's Bush Is The Love Child Of Hitler and Tokyo Rose or Jim Hightower's Bush Kidnapped The Linbergh Baby or MoveOn.org's Bush Enjoys Raping Kittens, Small Children ad yet.
Here's what's interesting - note how the successful political campaigns usually say something about their candidate rather than just smear the other guy. Like what has John Kerry been doing for the last 20 years. Where are his major legislative accomplishments. He's had two decades in the Senate, let's see what he's done? As long as we're on it, let's see what his position is on Iraq. What would he do now to end the violence there? How would he fight terrorism? What would he do in Darfur? How will he stop the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons? How will he contain North Korea?
Hell, the Democrats should be doing that sort of thing regardless. I know it's a shock to some, but not everyone in America hates Bush. Some of us (gasp!) actually think he's done rather well given the situation he's had to work with. And some of us do so because we've actually taken the time to do our homework.
Nope, instead just bash Bush. There's a real winning strategy.
Hint, when the server recovers from being Slashdotted, take a look at McGovern's "Morning in America" ads and compare them to the ads Kerry is running. Note McGovern's electoral successes. Look at Mondale's ads against Reagan. Note how well he did.
Then note why campaigns that are just referendums against a relatively popular incumbant but offer no information on the challenger end up failing miserably.
so far as I can tell, not true of Clinton
Dole race (just a casual googling tells me
this). Where do you get your data from?
In every presidential election covered by television, the candidate with the most campaign money has become President.
Care to back up that assertion? I must have missed Bob Dole's narrow victory in 1996, then...
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
this is team sports speaking in your post, and you are apparently filling out the roster
most noticeably, you grimace in horror when i point out the negative attack potential of the democrats, but you are conveniently in alzheimer's mode about your own team's attack dogs hard at work right now (rah rah rah! go team!)
so rather than bang up against your blind spot, i am going to go with realpolitik: politics is not philosophical debate society, it's flesh and blood sports, as your one-sided shock and perplexed understanding of the relative sins and virtues of republicans and democrats attest to: you're a fully indoctrinated one-sided team player
i won't buy into the whole "can't we all just get along" road some seem to insist that will make negative ads go away in politics
politics is politics is politics. it's ugly stuff. you will never turn politics into something else unless you change human nature itself.
therefore, my observations about kerry needing to go full press attack mode still makes sense, from an objective, neutral, third-party pov, as if watching two football teams go at it midgame and commenting on what strategy one or the other should take to win the game... of course, if you are one of the teams and hear me commenting on the way the other team should win, your reaction fits in perfectly
i live in the real world of human nature in all of its good, bad, and ugly qualities and without your rah rah go home team one-sided blind spot attitude towards the virtuousness of the repulican party
want to argue virtue? you're in the wrong world buddy
when you're ready to talk about reality and realism and what plain works in american politics as it is, not as it wouldashouldacoulda be in science fiction, get back to me
until then, the attack ad proposition stands as sound
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you are conveniently forgetting that the "intelligent thing to do" would be to have kept family members of the man who staged the bloodiest assault on us soil in easy reach
;-P
;-)
what kind of world do you live in where the safety of some rich bastards whose money was used to stage an attack which killed thousands of your fellow americans is a more pressing matter than getting to the bottom of what happened?
the "intelligent thing to do" in your world apparently comes form the same logic of the world where marie antoinette said "let them eat cake"
also, you seem to be out of touch with the concepts of leadership and accountability
as a leader, you don't defer blame on important matters, you take responsibilty for them. that's why higher ups get fired when their lowly henchmen fuck up royally. it's called accountability. if something really awful happens, heads high up roll, as proof of their leadership and acceptance of responsibility.
so are you saying that george bush isn't accountable for sensitive things the us govt does?
well, you are right in the sense that a man of gwb's dim intellectual faculties is clearly not accountable for much of anything, but i don't think that's the point you wanted to make
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I don't think you will find any party putting up a fight over air the ads. If they did anything like that, they would look pretty foolish. It would only serve to draw attention to what they didn't want you to see or better yet cause people to think that they really had something bad to hide. Free use or not, nobody is going to stop them.
Except that you get into the problem that we have now, with the Swift Boat Vets, and MoveOn.org. Campaign donation limits were instituted, so now "non-affiliated" groups collect donations and buy advertising that is no longer allowed to the "official" campaign.
If you try to institute a spending limit, first you would have to place a time limit for the spending... say maximum of $50 million in the 90 or 180 days prior to the election. Then the first elegible day, you would see Strongbad and Cartman screaming the name of the candidate over-and-over in a commercial until $50 million in advertising dollars was used up, paid for by the opposition. Then for the remaining time until the election that candidate couldn't spend any more money on "advertising" because it was already done for him.
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
Sounds like as good a reason as any to limit the amount people can spend on a Presidential campaign.
That's a simplistic solution to a complex problem. It does nothing to curtail the ultra-rich and the mega-influential. A corporation could start inserting subtle political messages into its ad campaigns. Or a person could conceivably make a movie with a political message, call it a 'documentary' and have the DVD released just before an important election. Options like these are only available to a select few, but it's these select few that need the restrictions.
that the minor inconvenience and detention of some rich foreign bastards is more important than the right of the american people to get to the bottom of the worst slaughter of their fellow citizens in the history of this country?
maybe in the world of marie antoinette and "let them eat cake" does ferreting away the poor betrodden discomforted inconvenienced bin ladens make sense
but i have to beg to differ with you: they should have been detained, and questioned, period, end of story... no logic employing what we know now serving as judgment about what happened in retrospect need apply
the bin ladens should not have been coddled and serviced, they should have been detained and questioned
and any suggestion to the latter is of questionable elitism at work, not logic or judgment or the taking of the interests and well-being of the voting american public first and foremost
which is exactly the whole problem that bush and his ilk have: allegiance to the ultrarich and big oil instead of the average american, and why kerry should force that issue to the forefront with attack ads to help his campaign
ps: while kerry is a rich bastard himself, i scarcely see the american government ever invading italy so as to secure the safety of our precious precious tomatoes so the heinz kethcup industry not suffer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Or its news channels. . . .
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I mentioned this in another thread, as well, and the more I read up on it, the more I feel that voting is just giving sanction to a corrupt system.
This is a nice archive of articles on non-voting, and I'd say this one is a good place to start.
Granted, I'll still probably go fill in the blank, knowing that it won't matter, and my vote won't make either party change it's plans -- they'll still go just a socialist no matter who I vote for, but hey, it's nice to read some opposing viewpoints.
(-1, OffTopic)
If I was that drunk, I would have remembered it -- H. Simpson
If your commercial interrupts my enjoyment of the program I'm watching, I'm remembering your ad and voting against you. And yes, I'll hold 527 ads against whomever I can discern as benefitting from your ads. So far, I'm only voting against Bush and Kerry. I'll expand that list if I only see someone else's ad.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
the family of the man who made the bloodiest attack on us soil ever needed to be detained, not coddled
period
end of story
fanciful orwell embellishments need not apply
simple point
simple concept
stop grasping at imaginative literary straws
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In every presidential election covered by television, the candidate with the most campaign money has become President.
Yes, and it is unfortante because 30 second commercial spots are absolutely the worst way to inform yourself about the issues. The best resource I have found so far is FactCheck.org, a non-partison voter advocacy site affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. They examine the various ads and claims made by candidates and do an excellent job separating fact from fiction. They debunk the Republican's swift boat ads. They also deconstruct the Democrat's spin on the economic numbers. All in all, a vary balanced and well researched web site.
The Bolachek Journals
yes, there are freedom of speech issues but most countries already deign to regulate political campaigning, especially around election time.
Do any of these countries have the following in their constitutions?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I don't think there is such a thing as a "freedom of speech issue". Either you have freedom of speech or you don't.