Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, developed a new ad in the style of MoveOn.org's Iraq ad. This is a small ad buy but it will most likely be targeted to Evangelicals who may think about supporting Senator Obama in the fall. Here is the ad:
The ad relies on the same appeal to pity, straw argument, and reductio ad absurdum found within the ad by MoveOn.org..
Just as James Dobson attacked Senator Obama earlier this week, Perkins will as well. The fear that Dobson and Perkins face is not that Obama will win over the Evangelical vote but neutralize them in the election. Slate has an excellent piece on how Senator Obama is doing a much better job that Kerry or Gore at appearing human rather than a straw argument to these voters. If he closes the gap with Evangelical voters or at least neutralizes them, then that may be the difference between winning and losing a state like Ohio.
5 comments:
At least, the makers of both ads are raising legitmate concerns that voters have.
Lots of voters feel strongly about the abortion issue, and there is a difference on that issue with the candidates. And of course both sides are going to invoke emotional appeals, since it is an emotional issue.
As for the moveon Ad, it is an emotionally-charged question, or should be anyway, whether or not the United States should be in a perpetual state of war. Actually, debate over such things drained entirely of emotion is not only offensive in its conception, but impossible in practice.
Hard to deny. Both metaphorically and literally, John McCain and the people he represents do indeed "want baby Alex."
Some time ago you pointed out that the question of a draft was too removed for it to resonate with people. Right you were.
But this does not change the fact that the trajectory we are on has the draft in its sights. Because that isn't resonating with people yet, doesn't make it any lesss true.
There are emotional arguments and then there are emotional arguments.
Emotion appeals in and of themselves are not bad; the problem is when they overpower other aspects of the message to cut off debate. For example, with this ad are the following logical entailments: How selfish can a woman be for arguing that this is her body when, obviously, there is another life at stake, which is more important? How can a father allow his wife to disrespect his word and do what she wants with her body?
This is the problem with the Perkins ad as it does not even engage in the debate and simplifies it to absurdity. The same with Iraq.
But then, for a great many people invested in these debates, what you are defining as absurdity is the essence of the position.
If you genuinely think that the Iraq invasion amounts to a giant waste of human blood, then you may not be interested in, as you put it, engaging the debate on other fronts. And to have this position is, shall we say, defensible to the extreme.
With the abortion question, again, what you write off as absurdity for most everyone invested in the issue, is the essence of the issue. If you genuinely think that abortion is murder, how could you possibly be interested in engaging the debate on other grounds? If on the other hand you do not at all recognize personhood in a fetus, and see attempts to criminalize abortion as an attempt to control women, then you may not be interested in the claims of a Tony Perkins or a James Dobson.
There may be room for middle-ground debate on abortion, but Harrogate isn't so sure. Verily, the irreconcilible nature of the abortion debate may well prove the albatross around all our necks, an albatross of a scale that would make Coleridge proud.
I think what is necessary, as always, is the consideration of the audience, as you point out. If you view that Iraq is a human bloodbath, the ad is not for you as you are already persuaded by the position; if you are for the war it is not for you. If you occupy the "great Silent Majority" it is for you.
The Iraq ad does nothing for me as it diminishes the debate about the war. On the other hand, the emotional aspects of the ad, which I call an appeal to pity, moves Megs like no other.
My second consideration, with audience, is the way in which the statement makes an attempt to debate the issue. When an audience is convinced of something, there is no reason to debate them (abortion is murder, We must leave Iraq now, we must stay in Iraq for 100 years). But I certainly can criticize their position for the way in which they misconstrue the terms of the debate and the way in which it cuts off debate, as both of these ads do.
I think that there is a middle-ground position available and it is the European model: women have the ability to seek an abortion during the first trimester without question (generally when brain waves develop, which would make sense considering a person is legally brain-dead when brain waves end). After the first trimester, the right becomes restricted to cases relating to health concerns (whether it is the fetus or the mother). After birth, the state need to increase benefits and social services for new parents, even if it is for adoption.
This avoids the absolute positions of Life and the Rights of the mother as it protects both. This position will never happen as it has to occur at the federal level and it does not go far enough on either side. Besides, politicians would not have anything to campaign for or against during election season.
Again, moveon's implication of a draft cannot but come true, and in the next eight years, if we stay on the present trajectory. Whether or not the "Silent Majority" recognizes this does not change the truth of it. So that was a solid argument.
Second, your worry that "debate" on the Iraq war is being somehow compromised by appeals to pity lend that "debate" a measure of dignity that fewer and fewer people in this country would themselves lend it.
It seems that the "Silent Majority" you speak of is coming to apprehend the Truth, that the Iraq occupation amounts to a waste of blood. Problem now is, it's also proven a tar baby.
You've got all these "Silent Majority" types (not to mention quite a few original opponents of the war) arguing that we have to stay in now, as withdrawal will only make things worse.
How staying longer is going to help the situation, they will not, can not say. Nor do they need to. We are staying. And so, tar baby wins. Yay, we are stuck. This does not, however, change the banality of the notion that "reasonable people can disagree" on what has happened.
Meanwhile, it is indeed fair to say that the majority of those who do not think the Iraq war is a waste of blood at all, but that it was the right thing to do, are the ideologues like Kristol and Cheney and McCain, to whom we have already referred in other posts today.
In the imaginations of these, "roses at the feet" really happened, and we should "bomb Iran", like, yesterday. So that we can get more roses thrown at our feet.
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