Political incivility, as discussed in
class, is a rising trend among politicians and politics. In the onset of this gruesome
battle between Republics and Democratic parties have grown many outlets, thanks
to the Internet and its growing popularity among the masses, where incivility
grows towards one politician to another through many forms. They have produced
attack ads, commercials, debates are held in public, and interviews are aired
with major news network channels and day-time television shows. With voting
starting in a few days, attacks ads have become the specialty that the public
has been served through all media outlets like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.
All candidates whether for the Presidential election or just the state
election, place attack ads everywhere and are seen by everyone. This commercial,
specifically, shows how far the Presidential campaign attack ads have spiraled out
of control.
The video above shows Sesame Street’s
famous children’s character, Big Bird. Now Big Bird has been discussed over the
internet like crazy and it’s spread like wild fire due to past debates. Mitt
Romney, the Republican Presidential candidate, has amended that when in office
he will cut subsidized funding towards PBS, the network that airs Big Bird and
his fellow friends. As with any opposing candidate, Barack Obama, the
Democratic Presidential candidate, uses
his team to turn this statement against Romney in this ad.
The video starts by showing a few
business men- Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay, and Dennis Kozlowski- all who have
been involved in huge Ponzi schemes in Wall Street or made very risky and
illegal business trades in the market. Now all of these men have been caught
for their illegal activities and have spent or are spending time in jail. The
ad states that the evil criminal mastermind involved in all of these schemes
was the notorious Sesame Street character Big Bird. Now this is some-what
impossible and ridiculous to state since Big Bird is just a puppet and not an
actual human being, although he is played by one. Big Bird is a friendly
children’s character that teaches the children and provides entertainment as
well as educational learning- PBS’s medium message.
Now in
a normal attack ad the candidate would be featured in bad light by saying
something along the lines of cutting educational learning for children is the
type of President you’ll get if you elect him. But instead of jumping to that
conclusion, the Obama campaign, paints Romney in good light because he had
enough courage to name the evil master mind on Wall Street, Big Bird. Romney knows
that Big Bird is a “Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy.”
Now
this is where the ads twist the words of the other candidate and paint it in basically
an exaggerated light. Bird Big is of course not a menace to our economy neither
is PBS. But according to Romney, as the Obama administration observes, he is and
is taking tax- payer money to fund his evil vicious plans so we as a nation
must cut him off. Romney is stating that we shouldn't worry about all our retirement funds, or college funds, or investments,
or our 401 K, resting in Wall Street with greedy investors. Those are fine and
safe. What we should do through is check out how Sesame Street is doing. Who
knows, Elmo might be making shady deals with Oscar, and Ernie might not be
playing fair and cheating on his taxes. We should focus on this instead. This
is the message Obama was trying to point out to the audience by showing how absurd
this idea is.
Obama used a good word choice here in
the ad. Instead of saying that Big Bird was a menace to our country or national
security or even Wall Street, he simply says that Romney knows he is a threat
to the economy. Is that because, Romney being CEO of Bain Capital and knowing
the ins and outs of a business, also knows how the market can be affected and hurt
investments? That being a business man that we should trust his wisdom since
his business also depends on the market? Or is Obama using this logic to prove
that Romney might in fact not know anything about the market, mainly the fact
of how to raise it or fix it?
