Soccer Dad

Rats redux

Hot Air observes about the supposed subliminal message in a McCain ad:

They're using the overreaction of elitist imbeciles earlier in the week not as a cautionary tale for everyone to mellow out but as reason to ratchet up the paranoia. Think of it as a negligence case, with the insane uproar over the New Yorker cover serving as the new legal standard of reasonableness: Because the leftist intelligentsia is (a) nuts, and (b) known to fly off the handle for political advantage at any opportunity, it was therefore foreseeable that they'd scrutinize McCain's ads for subliminal messages, which in turn makes McCain negligent for not vetting his ads to make sure they're safe for nuts to watch. Is it too soon for another vacation?

(via memeorandum)

ABC's Political Radar asks:

What do you think? An oversight? Meaningless? Or "RATS" part two?

I think all three, It was meaningless oversight just as "RATS" was. What's the "RATS" story?

After being mentioned two weeks earlier by Brit Hume (who got a good laugh out of it), the New York Times ran a story on its front page in September 2000.

At first glance, the Republican television commercial on prescription drugs looks like a run-of-the-mill attack advertisement.

The announcer starts by lauding George W. Bush's proposal for dealing with prescription drugs, and criticizes the plan being offered by Vice President Al Gore. Fragments of the phrase ''bureaucrats decide'' -- deriding Mr. Gore's proposal -- then dance around the screen.

Then, if the viewer watches very closely, something else happens. The word ''rats,'' a fragment of the word ''bureaucrats,'' pops up in one frame. And though the image lasts only one-thirtieth of a second, it is in huge white capital letters, larger than any other word on the commercial.

How'd the Times find out about this?

According to the Gore campaign, the word was spotted by Gary Greenup, a 64-year-old retired Boeing technical writer in Seattle. To be sure of what he saw, Mr. Greenup taped the commercial soon after it was first broadcast in late August and slowed the tape down to reveal the word.

''It somehow caught my eye,'' he said. Usually, he added, ''I don't look this closely at ads -- mostly I'd just as soon not view them.''

Mr. Greenup called the King County Democratic Party, which alerted the Gore campaign.

Mr. Greenup said that while he was a Democrat, he was not active in local politics. ''I'm not working in the party,'' he said. ''I contribute a little annually -- it's very, very small.''

In other words, two weeks after it was first noted publicly, the Times ran a front page story scattered with carefully chosen quotes made to portray the insertion of "RATS" as intentional on the say-so of the Gore campaign. If it was an issue, it was one when Brit Hume noticed it, but no one at the Times thought anything of it until they got a copy from the Gore campaign. (I guess its possible that no one at the Times watched Fox News.)

This front page non-story was followed the next day by a smarmy self-righteous editorial.

Smart Republicans know that, all kidding aside, this is a fraught moment for the Bush campaign. The governor's malapropisms are becoming standard comic fare. Yesterday he referred four times to ''subliminable'' techniques. Meanwhile a conservative publication, The Weekly Standard, features on its cover a worried-looking Mr. Bush beside the slightly panicky-sounding headline ''How Bush Can Win.'' Being an object of doubt and ridicule can quickly become a serious problem for a presidential candidate. Just ask Michael Dukakis.

So the Times editorial page added to the Gore campaign's effort to make the then-Texas governor like an imbecile. Then it was followed by this non-sequitir.

Forceful damage control would be Mr. Bush's smartest move. He has already pulled the ad. But since subliminal messages are regarded as unethical by the ad industry and unfairly deceptive by the Federal Communications Commission, Mr. Bush should go further. He needs to find out how it got on the air in the first place, especially since Alex Castellanos, who produced the commercial for the Republican National Committee, has not kept his story straight.

Mr. Castellanos originally told Richard Berke of The Times that the use of the word was ''purely accidental.'' Yesterday he said he was using a ''visual drumbeat designed to make you look at the word bureaucrats.'' That sounds to us like a declaration of intent to use subliminal techniques by Mr. Castellanos, who is known as a creator of attack ads.

How are the two statements of Mr. Castellano's inconsistent? If he was trying to emphasize "BUREAUCRATS" why would he distract from that by emphasizing "RATS?" The way the Times played up this non-story, undermined any pretense it had of being objective. The Times chose to attack the candidate it opposed in blatant effort to help the candidate it supported.

I wonder how many MSM outlets will now promote the "Al Qaeda" fantasy to show that John McCain is a weasel who is trying to portray Barack Obama as a terrorist.