*Puts partisan hat on* What do you think these ads imply to the subconscious

[angus]

I like the letters-cut-out-of-the-newspaper-so-you-can't-trace-the-kidnapper-by-his-handwriting effect.

That's my first impression.  Doesn't change my vote, but if I ever need to hire a marketing firm, I'd definitely consider the one responsible for that pamphlet.

[angus]

exactly.

gotta take that partisan hat off and put the old art critic hat on.

The subliminally registered "Obama = terrorist" requires probably at least as much creativity as a big sheath of cellophane encircling the Reichstag, imho.  Then again, much art goes over my head.

[angus]

Obama is soft on terrorism; that's how I'd read it (though I'm not impressed with the linkage).

More importantly, what's the solution?

Although Mama bear may only want to coddle them and hold them to her breasts and give them a thorough tongue-lashing, Papa bear wanted to string them up and run bamboo shoots under their fingernails till they sung like pigeons.  Maybe you'll run Baby Bear for President in 2012.  Let's see how he does.  Maybe he's just what we need. 

Then again, we live in a society in which the selfish little blonde bitch who breaks into private houses (and steals their food and breaks their chairs) somehow manages to come off as sympathetic.  Admit it, you know you don't want to see her get mauled or eaten by the bears.

I blame the schools.

[angus]

All very clever Lunar.

Not unlike the actual photo in your signature, really.  It's all just actual information supplied in a very clever way.  I still say it's hard to beat the kidnapper's cut-out letters effect.  I love that.

"Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend Trident to their patients who chew gum."

Hard to verify that, so you could probably say anything, right?  But let's assume it's true.  But do they tell us how many, out of five, probably started off with, "Well, they shouldn't chew gum at all."  Of course they don't.  Nor do they tell us how hard the dentists had to be pressed to even get them to say anything good about gum.  Nor did they tell us where they found these dentists.  Was it truly a representative sample?  Maybe a thousand polls were done, and each poll polled five dentists, and mostly the best they could do was one or two out of five admitting that Trident was not as bad as, say, Juicy Fruit.  But in one poll they just got lucky.  An inhomogeneous sample, and that set of five dentists really truly did have four who'd admit that Trident was better than Juicy Fruit.  And did the dentists really offer the brand name Trident, unprompted?  Or was it more like, "Well, if you did have patients who really say that they must chew gum, would you recommend to them Juicy Fruit, a nasty sugar-filled gum which rots teeth, or would you recommend to them a sugar-free, fluoride-containing gum called Trident?"  

Figures don't lie.  Liars figure.  N'est-ce pas?

Nothing wrong with saying Bill Ayers is a weirdo.  Nothing wrong with a profile of Obama, dejected, head down.  Nothing wrong with the spelling of Terrorist or of Radical, either.  But together they have an erie effect, taken out of context like that.  Just like there's nothing wrong with your actual photo.  But isn't it great to take things out of context?  Admit it.  You are quite adept at this sort of imagery as well.  And your signature shows that you really don't have any questions about this sort of thing.  You understand very well the concept of evoking feelings and giving false impressions without actually making a false statement, I think.

I think we all do.  And all's fair in this game, don't you think?

[angus]

Fair enough.  But there's nothing new here.  In the 1800 campaign, Jefferson's campaign people advertised that Adams was a “hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”  And if that wasn't enough, Adams carried things even further, asking voters, “Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames… female chastity violated… children writhing on the pike?”  As if Jefferson was so inept at staving off foreign "terrorists" (Amerindians, French, and English) that the country was doomed if Adams wasn't elected. 

In the 1860 election materials, cartoons actually showed Democrat candidate John Breckenridge dressed as a foreign soldier trying to break into the White House. 

During the time of the 1928 election, the Holland Tunnel was being dug.  Herbert Hoover told everyone that Al Smith had commissioned a secret tunnel 3,500 miles long, from the Holland Tunnel to the Vatican in Rome, and that the Pope would have say in all presidential matters should Smith be elected.  How blatant an accusation of foreign subservience is that?

In the 1980 election, Democrats for Reagan commercials showed clips of Ted Kennedy famously saying, "No more American Hostages!  And no more Jimmy Carter!"  As if the two were inextricably linked, and as if Kennedy was secretly rooting for Reagan.

And there are thousands of other examples.  I agree that it's all very misleading and unseemly, and I hope that a well-educated voting populace can see through the attempts to mislead.  When I said "it's fair" I only meant that the precedent of accusing your opponent of being unpatriotic (or soft on terrorism or even subservient to foreign masters) had been set long before these two were born.  I hardly think this will go down as one of the nastiest campaigns in the history of US Presidential elections.