October 16 - Pet Peeve Monday - Do Not Call List

This week’s PET PEEVE MONDAY is a Peeve for everyone I know. It is POLITICAL ADS. They start to early, air too often, and are too negative.

I have not found any use for political ads. I do my own research via the web of a candidate’s position on issues that concern me. I’m more likely NOT to vote for a candidate that can only produce negative ads. Those ads do not inform me of why TO vote for him/her.

The truly egregious political ad is the taped phone call from the candidate. Do they really think that an ill timed, canned message from a candidate that arrives at dinner time or in the middle of my favorite TV show will sway my vote?

According to the “National Do Not Call Registry” for telemarketers, I should only receive calls from businesses with which I have a direct relationship. Why doesn’t this apply to politicians? I do NOT have a relationship with any politician since all of my voting is anonymous, or so I thought.

When they call, I always shout “TAKE ME OFF YOUR LIST” to no avail, it’s a recording. If I do get a live representative, I tell them I won’t vote for their candidate because he inappropriately hit on me when I was a teenage page. Boy, do they hang up quickly.

Here’s my message to ALL candidates, STOP THE CALLS.

A misleading tactic many ads use is that “He voted against X!” Many times it is when X, the issue, was just a rider on a larger bill that was really bad or had a bunch of pork.

Steve Kagan, a doctor and Democrat, running for Congress in Wisconsin, is being attacked for having sued patients who did not pay their bills. “Why not just tell the truth, Dr. Millionaire?” said an advertisement. Why can’t someone use the legal system to collect their due funds. I would. Since when is being a capitalist a bad thing.

Why not just put the candidates on ‘The Jerry Springer Show” and let them fight it out with chairs and insults. The tone of the ads with their half-truths, personal attacks, and name-calling are almost there. The only problem with the Springer Show method is that you wouldn’t be able to tell when the commercials end and the actual show begins.

The implicit message in a political ad attacking Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford, is that he parties with Playboy bunnies and then goes to church. Ford’s sin is that he attended the 2005 Playboy Super Bow Party. I would have attended a Preparation H Super Bowl Party if it had gotten me into the game. It doesn’t make me a pain in the ass, that’s genetic.

Virginia Governorship candidate Jim Webb is being challenged because he said in an article he wrote 27 years ago (page 277 of “Washingtonian Magazine”) saying a military dorm with 4,000 males and 300 females “is a horny woman’s dream.” In the 70s the public debated whether the all-male military should be open to women at all. Twenty-seven years ago, I was 17. I hate to think of what digressions would be attributed to me. I wrote an essay in the school paper in 1979 about necessary ban on gum chewing in class. My Wrigley and Nicoderm PAC money bubble (gum) burst before I even knew what it was.

In the 13th district of North Carolina, incumbent Democrat Brad Miller is accused of “spending your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia.” From the same ad, it states, “Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men.”

His opponent, Republican Vernon Robinson was accused of being so far right that the Winston-Salem Journal declared in an editorial about Robinson, “Jesse Helms is back! And this time, he’s black.” THAT IS FROM A NEWSPAPER.

Robinson got personal in his attacks and suggested that since Miller is middle-aged and childless, that he must be homosexual. Miller then felt he had to explain that his wife is unable to bear children due to the fact she had a hysterectomy and suffers from endometriosis.
Man, I’m not sure anyone is electable in North Carolina.

It makes one wonder what John Adams could say about Thomas Jefferson if the 1796 Presidential campaign were held today. If you recall your history, Adams would have a field day with the Jefferson and his affair with Sally Hemings, one of his employees (slaves). Mr. Jefferson also fathered children with Ms. Hemings.

First, Jefferson would wag his ink stained finger and say, ‘I did not have sex with that Slave, Sally Hemings.” Then when it came out that Jefferson actually fathered a child, he could rejoin and state in a John Kerry like predilection, “I actually was against slavery, before I was for it.”

However, we all know that if Jefferson had these same issues today that he had in 1796, he would never be President, let alone County Commissioner. This would make Mt. Rushmore a mighty lonely place.

My PET PEEVE is relevant. We need to eliminate the putrid style in which we conduct campaigning. It is keeping qualified candidates from entering the once respected field of public service. We are now stuck with incumbents that are in place until they are indicted or convicted like Ney, Foley, and others. We are also stuck with pompous others that committed far worse crimes before the modern lynch mobs took note.

People like Ted Kennedy (manslaughter), Robert Byrd (hate crimes), and Barney Frank (male prostitution) are also unfit to be REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE.